Arthur Goes Fourth V: Frensky Friday
by Dead Composer
Summary: Francine and Sue Ellen have an out of body experience.
1. A Switch in Time

This fic is rated PG for violence.

Disclaimer: The Arthur characters all live together in a great big house, and Marc Brown owns the house.

----

In his study, or the "war room" as he liked to call it, Ed Crosswire (who was cross indeed) was engaged in a phone argument with a police investigator.

"It's been two weeks now!" he exclaimed angrily. "What are you people doing, playing darts all day? My tax dollars are paying for you to find my daughter!" He paused. "Yes, I've already increased the reward figure. Three times. It's now at one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars."

As he bickered with the officer, a dog man wearing a blue uniform and cap shuffled into the study. His expression was one of anxiety, as if he expected to suffer terrible repercussions merely for being in the room.

"I received seven ransom notes today," Mr. Crosswire went on, "but I think they were all cranks."

"Begging your pardon, sir," said the dog man meekly.

Mr. Crosswire lowered the phone and glowered at the man. "What do you want? Who are you?"

"Bailey, sir," the man replied. "Miss Muffy's chauffeur."

"Well, out with it!" Mr. Crosswire growled impatiently.

Bailey pulled off his cap and held it in front of him, as if to show respect. "Sir, I have a confession to make. I drove Miss Muffy to the train station on the day she disappeared. It is my opinion that she is in the company of one Angela Ratburn, who is fleeing from a court order."

Mr. Crosswire laid down the phone and leaped to his feet. "Why did you wait until now to tell me this?"

"She, er, purchased my silence, sir," Bailey responded.

Mr. Crosswire clenched his fists. "What else do you know?" he demanded.

"I know that you've been forcing the poor girl to attend a private school at which her needs are not being met," said Bailey, his voice growing more bold. "I know that your obsession with the Simon lawsuit has led you to neglect her. And I know that, as of this day, I am no longer your employee." With that, he unceremoniously dropped his cap onto the floor at Mr. Crosswire's feet.

As the used-car magnate watched in confusion and wonder, Bailey turned on his heel and walked out of the study, smiling and humming a happy tune.

----

It was Friday afternoon, and a light snow was falling. When Francine arrived at her apartment after playing with her friends, she quickly pulled off her red jacket, placed it in the closet, jumped onto the couch, and used the remote to turn on the TV. The opening credits for her favorite new TV series, Rat Woman, were underway.

As Francine eagerly anticipated a new adventure, her sister Catherine emerged from their shared bedroom, with a towel wrapped around her head. "Hi, Frankie," she said in greeting. "You'll never guess what happened to me today. You know that guy named Mitch who kept trying to call you?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, he stopped me on the sidewalk in front of the high school. He called me Francine."

"Interesting," said Francine, although she felt a little nervous. "What did you do?"

"I told him that my name was Catherine, but I sometimes went by my middle name, Francine. He was kinda cute, you know."

"Hmm," Francine grunted. On the TV screen, the alluring ex-villainess Rat Woman was locked in combat with the crime kingpin Frightmask, a man with the ability to contort his face into horrifying shapes. What made the struggle more intriguing was that Frightmask had been Rat Woman's mentor during the early days of her own criminal career.

The phone rang. "Frankie, will you answer that?" called Catherine.

Francine grabbed the remote and pushed the pause button, but remembered that she was watching live TV. Standing up, she went to the kitchen and picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Francine!" She gasped when she recognized the voice.

"Muffy? Where are you? Where have you..."

"I don't have time to talk," Muffy's voice interrupted. "Listen carefully. I want you and Sue Ellen to meet me at the old barn by the creek, in fifteen minutes. No parents, no police, just the two of you. Goodbye."

The call ended, and Francine replaced the receiver. Without a moment's hesitation, she hurred to the closet and yanked out her coat.

Several minutes later, she was ringing the doorbell at the Armstrong house. Shortly Sue Ellen answered. "Oh, hey, Francine."

"Get your coat on," said Francine firmly. "I just got a call from Muffy."

Sue Ellen was startled. "Where is she?"

"She's going to meet us at the old barn by the creek," Francine replied.

Enthused at the prospect of being reunited with the missing girl, Sue Ellen grabbed her light yellow coat from the rack and threw it on, first over her cast, then over her right arm.

The two girls walked eagerly along the sidewalk, making a crunching sound as they stepped on the crisp layer of ice. "Maybe we should tell the police," Sue Ellen suggested.

"She said no police," Francine responded. "She must have a good reason. Maybe she's broken the law."

The skies were beginning to darken as they stepped through the frozen grass near the old barn, where Francine had once battled an evil Irish setter and come into possession of a magical unicorn horn.

"Muff-" Sue Ellen started to cry out, but Francine waved a hand at her.

Without making a sound, they tiptoed toward the entrance to the barn, which had been left slightly open. "I think she's inside," Francine whispered.

They slipped carefully through the crack in the door. The small amount of light passing through the windows revealed, in one near corner of the structure, a small girl with her back turned to them. She was kneeling and her head was bowed, as if she was in mourning. Although the drab clothes were unlike anything Francine and Sue Ellen had ever seen Muffy wear, the red braids appeared genuine.

"Muffy, it's us!" Francine whispered to her.

"Come closer," the girl whispered back in a quivering voice.

As they walked across the hay-strewn floor toward the girl, she suddenly turned around. To their surprise, she was wearing a black mask over the lower part of her face. Her eyes were filled with dire purpose. Raising a nozzle she held in one hand, she fired a cloud of gas at them, and suddenly everything turned to blackness...

----

Francine didn't know how much time had passed since she and Sue Ellen had encountered the masked girl. She groggily forced her eyes to open. She was apparently still in the barn, but there was much less light than before. Hoping to illiminate things by opening the barn door wider, she tried to push herself to her feet. While her right arm moved freely, for some reason her left arm was frozen at a right angle, and would not bend. Her head spun wildly as she straightened up, and she feared she would lose her footing. After stumbling around drunkenly for a few seconds, she managed to walk in a semi-straight line toward the door. The light coming through caused her eyes and head to hurt. As she aggressively shook her head in an attempt to ward off the effects of the gas that had knocked her unconscious, she noticed several unusual things about herself. First, she seemed to have more hair than before. Second, she was no longer wearing her own clothes. Third, her left arm was in a cast.

She reached up with her right hand and felt the top of her head. Two pointed, catlike ears sticking up through mounds of curly hair...this wasn't right.

Her eyes now adjusted to the light, she looked toward the corner where she thought she had left Sue Ellen...only to see her own body lying there.

She tried to scream, but only a whimper came out.

(To be continued...)


	2. I Believe You Have My Body

"Wake up! Wake up!" Sue Ellen, vaguely aware of her surroundings, heard what she thought was her own voice calling to her. She opened her eyes, but could only see a dark blur with a foggy white shape in the middle. As she blinked and struggled to focus, it became clearer, and she thought for a moment that she was looking into a mirror. Except that her reflection was talking, and she wasn't. 

"Sue Ellen? That's you, isn't it?" asked the reflection.

"Yeah, it's me," she replied, a bit surprised that her voice seemed deeper than usual. "Who do I look like?"

"You're not gonna believe it when I tell you," said the girl who looked exactly like her. The next thing Sue Ellen knew, she was being lifted into a sitting position. She realized with alarm that her left arm was flopping about freely.

"My cast!" she cried out.

"I have it," said the other girl.

"Put it back on!" Sue Ellen urged. "My arm's broken!"

Everything seemed to be spinning in circles around her, but she managed to look down and discover that she was wearing a red jacket instead of her usual light yellow coat. Also, her skirt had been replaced with a pair of blue jeans.

"What's going on?" she asked groggily. "These aren't my clothes."

"I know. They're mine."

Sue Ellen turned her head, and saw that the lookalike girl was crouching by her side. "Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm Francine," was the reply.

"But...but you look like me," Sue Ellen pointed out.

"I know," the girl replied. "And you look like me."

"What?" Sue Ellen lifted her right hand to her head, followed by her left hand. In place of her curls, she found straight, shoulder-length hair. And something else had changed as well. "What happened to my ears?" she asked, horrified.

The other girl wordlessly pointed to the top of her head, grinned, and wiggled her cat ears.

Sue Ellen flexed her left arm back and forth, as if amazed that it was functional. "Wait a minute. If you're Francine but you have my body, then...oh, no, don't tell me..."

Francine told her. "You have my body. I mean, you have Francine's body. Whatever."

Sue Ellen put her hands over her face--Francine's face--and shook her head, groaning.

"That girl blasted us with some kind of knockout gas," Francine mused. "It must be causing us to hallucinate."

"I don't think that was Muffy," said Sue Ellen as she lowered her hands.

"Can you walk?" Francine asked her. "Come on, I'll help you up."

Within moments, Sue Ellen, who looked like Francine, had her left arm around the shoulders of Francine, who looked like Sue Ellen, and they were trudging slowly through the barn doorway.

When they had walked halfway up the hill to the forest, Sue Ellen (heretofore referred to as Fransue) pulled her arm away. "I think I can walk on my own now," she said to Francine (heretofore known as Suefran).

"Let's get out of here as fast as we can," Suefran recommended. "That girl may still be around. She may blast us again."

The two mixed-up girls walked through the forest, each marveling at the realistic nature of the illusion.

"So what do we do now?" Fransue asked.

"We go home and sleep it off," Suefran answered.

"But what if we're not hallucinating? What if we've really turned into each other?"

"Don't be silly."

"Did you see any little dolls lying around?" asked Fransue. "When I was in the Bahamas I heard of a voodoo spell that can make people switch bodies."

"I've heard of the same thing," Suefran replied, "only it was in Dungeons and Dragons."

They soon arrived in a residential neighborhood, and walked along the street together, growing more uneasy with each step. Even Suefran began to worry that this bizarre exchange might be more than a hallucination.

They didn't speak a word to each other until they arrived at the corner where they would part their ways. "Well, this is it," Fransue remarked.

"Yeah," Suefran said. "I'll see you...I mean, I'll see me later."

Fransue giggled and started down the sidewalk toward her house. Along the way she passed a light pole with a poster attached. On the poster was Muffy's photo, with the message, MISSING: MUFFY CROSSWIRE. $115,000 REWARD.

----

Only one person in the world knew where Muffy Crosswire was, and that person was Nigel Ratburn's twin sister, Angela. On the run from an investigation into a long-ago-but-not-forgotten act of sabotage, she hoped to evade authorities for three months, at which time the statute of limitations would run out. What she didn't expect was that Muffy, unhappy with her home and school environments, would tag along for the ride.

The same missing child poster had been taped onto many storefront windows in the town of Clinton, about two hundred miles from Elwood City. Muffy, who had bobbed her hair to avoid being identified as the girl in the picture, was in the process of inserting her card into an ATM machine. Behind her stood Angela, who was wearing a tattered old dress and an unconvincing blond wig.

"Any day now," Angela observed glumly, "your father will put a block on your account, and you'll have no way of getting money."

"Well, then, you'd better get a job pretty quickly," said Muffy, who was clad in a turquoise blouse and skirt that she had purchased at a thrift store since leaving Elwood City.

As the machine spit out several $20 bills into Muffy's eager hands, Angela glanced up and down the street at the various fast-food joints. "So, what's it gonna be, Muffy?" she asked. "McDonald's? Burger King? Chicken Licken?"

Muffy sighed. "Ah, poverty. So this is what it's like to not know where my next meal is coming from."

----

Oliver Frensky was replacing a lightbulb in the kitchen, while his wife was in the living room watching TV, when they saw what appeared to be Sue Ellen open the apartment door and march inside. "Hi, Mom, hi, Dad," she said glibly, waving her right hand. Surprised into speechlessness, they could only watch as the girl walked into Francine and Catherine's bedroom.

Catherine, who was sitting on her bed with her back against the wall, lowered her magazine (_The Big Book of Popularity Tests_) when Suefran entered the room and heaved herself into Francine's bed without bothering to remove her yellow coat. "Francine's not here right now," said the older girl. "I think she'll be back soon."

Suefran cast her an incredulous glance. "Do I look like Sue Ellen to you, too?"

"Uh, yeah."

Suefran closed her eyes tightly and began to mutter. "It's not real...it's not real..."

"If you're not Sue Ellen, then who are you?" asked Catherine curiously.

"I'm Francine," Suefran grumbled. "You know, your sister."

Catherine chuckled. "You are, like, so not Francine."

"Just let me sleep." Suefran adjusted her left-arm cast until it was lying on her chest. "I'll be Francine when I wake up."

Now visibly concerned, Catherine put down her magazine, leaped from her bed, and went to talk to her parents.

----

A similar reception awaited Fransue when she opened the front door of the Armstrong house and walked inside. Mrs. Armstrong was sitting in front of an easel, painting a picture of herself sitting in front of an easel painting a picture, while Mr. Armstrong was in his easy chair, smoking a pipe and reading a book entitled PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND OTHER FAIRY TALES.

Mrs. Armstrong was the first to greet Fransue. "Hi, Francine. Where's Sue Ellen?"

"I'm Sue Ellen," Fransue replied curtly as she walked quickly toward her bedroom.

"Right." Mrs. Armstrong grinned playfully. "And I'm Millicent Crosswire."

"I'd much rather you were Jane Read," Mr. Armstrong remarked.

His wife scowled at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Ignoring her parents' banter, Fransue strolled past the travel posters adorning the walls and climbed into her bed. After tying her left arm to the bedpost with a cord so she wouldn't roll onto the cast in her sleep, she closed her eyes and struggled to relax. The thought flashed briefly through her mind that she hadn't taken her usual battery of painkillers and anti-HIV drugs, but by that time she was irretrievably on her way to slumberland.

Where she didn't stay long. Awakened by a disturbance, she saw Mrs. Frensky standing at the foot of the bed, with Suefran and Mrs. Armstrong on either side. "Let's go home, Frankie," the woman said to her.

"Huh?" Fransue glanced around in confusion. "But...but this is home."

"It's not an illusion," Suefran informed her. "Somehow I've become you, and you've become me. Let's just play along until we figure it out."

"But that's impossible!" The frantic Fransue jumped out of the bed and approached Mrs. Armstrong. "Mom, it's me! It's Sue Ellen!"

Mrs. Frensky took her gently by the arm. "Come along, dear."

As she led Fransue out of the bedroom, the terrified girl cried, "Yo hablo espanol! Francine no puede hablar espanol! Eso verifica que soy Sue Ellen!"

Suefran and Mrs. Armstrong stepped out of the bedroom and watched as Mrs. Frensky and the still babbling Fransue exited through the front door.

The red-haired woman placed a hand on Suefran's shoulder. "What is this, a game you're playing?" she asked innocently.

"Uh, right," Suefran replied. "It's a game. I pretend to be her, and she pretends to be me. Only I guess she doesn't know it's a game."

"You must be hungry," said Mrs. Armstrong. "We're having pork chops tonight."

Suefran groaned. Mrs. Armstrong went into the kitchen to finish her meal preparations, while Suefran, with a little mental exertion, managed to find her way to the bathroom.

She had never been inside Sue Ellen's bathroom before. It appeared more or less like a normal bathroom, save for a few exotic touches, like a liquid soap dispenser that was shaped like a Buddha statue, and a framed picture of the Serengeti mounted on the wall across from the toilet.

For the first time since the incident at the barn, Suefran looked at herself in the mirror. The shock was milder than she expected.

She ran her fingers over her nose, over her ears, through her hair. She had always considered Sue Ellen to be one of the more attractive girls in the class, and looking like her wasn't a bad thing, although the hair was probably a nightmare to manage. And having a broken arm wasn't exactly a new experience. What worried her was the other questions running through her mind: What caused it? Was it reversible? Would she spend the rest of her life like this?

How long would the rest of her life be? Sue Ellen's last blood test had been a week earlier, and had turned up positive for the virus...

----

Blah. That was the only word Fransue could think of to describe Francine's apartment, her bathroom, and her hair. What could she do with such dull hair? And having ears on the sides of her head might make it easier to talk on the phone, but other than that...well, blah. She had never been inside of such an uninteresting body.

"Dinner's ready," Mrs. Frensky said to the girl who was staring sadly into the bathroom mirror. "And I changed the sheets on your bed after Sue Ellen lay down on them, so don't worry."

"I'm not hungry," moaned Fransue. In reality she was famished, but part of her feared that filling Francine's stomach would cause her to be trapped forever in her present form. She closed her eyes and wished that she would wake up in her own house, in her own bed, in her own body. She opened them again, and Francine's face was still scowling at her from the mirror.

_There must be a way to stop this nightmare,_ she thought. _It's bad enough that I'm in Francine's body, but Francine being in my body is worse. What if she learns my secret?_

(To be continued...)


	3. I Believe You Still Have My Body

Fransue went hungry that evening. As the other Frenskys enjoyed a meal of kosher meat loaf, she lay motionlessly in Francine's bed, staring blankly at the David Beckham poster attached to the ceiling. The mattress wasn't very comfortable, but she had slept on much harder things in Africa. 

As she obsessively pondered what she would do if she never found a way to reclaim her own body, there came a knock on the door, which was shortly answered by Catherine. It was only a second before Beat Simon came running into the bedroom, wearing her pink parka and grinning with delight.

The British rabbit-aardvark girl seated herself on the corner of the bed and wrapped her hand around the top of the footboard. "Wonderful news, Frankie!" she announced.

It was the first time Sue Ellen had ever heard anyone whose last name wasn't Frensky call Francine by the nickname Frankie. Then she recalled the rumor that Binky had originated the previous month. She had discounted it as silly gossip that wasn't her business even if it was true. But now it_was_ her business...

"Uh, please don't sit on my bed," said Fransue uneasily.

Beat, her grin suddenly gone, slowly rose to her feet and stood at the side of the bed.

"What's the news?" Fransue asked her.

Beat grinned again. "I got a perfect mark on my maths test!"

"So what?" Fransue replied with indifference. "You always get perfect grades...uh, marks."

"Yes, but this was my first test at Uppity Downs," said Beat, bouncing on her heels excitedly. "I was afraid I wouldn't do well. I thought I might even get a C. But I sailed through with flying colors."

"Bully for you, Beat," Fransue muttered emotionlessly.

Beat stepped closer to Francine, concerned about her lack of spirit. "Is something wrong?"

"Yes, something's very wrong." Fransue sat up, a bitter scowl on her face. "Two hours ago, Francine got a call from Muffy asking her and me to meet with her at an old barn. When we got there, it wasn't Muffy, but some kid in a mask who sprayed us with sleeping gas. When we woke up, I was in Francine's body, and she was in mine. Oh, and I'm really Sue Ellen, by the way."

At first Beat stared at Fransue with a dark, incredulous expression. Then she burst into laughter. "Oh, I get it," she giggled. "This is some new fantasy game where you pretend you're someone else. Can I play? Can I be Fern? Can I levitate people and haunt their dreams?"

"I'm serious, Beat!" Fransue bellowed. "Remember the day we first met in London, when we were six? You had just gotten over the chickenpox. You still had a big red spot right here." She pointed to her left temple. "Your hair was longer, and you were wearing a red plaited skirt. You had memorized the Jabberwock poem from Alice in Wonderland, and you couldn't stop reciting it."

Although momentarily stunned, Beat quickly regained her composure. "That's very impressive, Frankie. How much did Sue Ellen tell you about our meeting in London?"

Fransue sighed hopelessly and collapsed onto her back. "No one will ever believe me," she groaned.

"I like this game," said Beat, smiling again. "I think I'll go over to Sue Ellen's now and see how much she knows about your life."

As Beat rushed out of the bedroom and through the apartment door, Fransue yelled after her, "Muchacha estupida!"

Another half hour passed with Fransue and Beckham staring uselessly at each other, and finally Fransue decided to call Suefran to find out if she had reached any conclusions.

The phone rang at the Armstrong house. Mrs. Armstrong, who was cleaning up after dinner, answered it and called for Suefran.

"Hello?" said Suefran as she put the receiver to her mouth with her right hand.

"Francine, this is Sue Ellen," came Francine's voice.

"Can you speak louder?" Suefran requested. "I have ears on the top of my head now."

"Sorry." Fransue increased her volume. "Did Beat talk to you?"

"Yeah," Suefran replied. "I tried to convince her that I'm Francine, but she thinks it's some kind of game."

"Same here. Any ideas how we can get out of this situation?"

"Nope."

"Me neither," said Fransue sadly.

"It looks like we may be stuck like this for a while," Suefran observed, "so I think we should try to learn as much about each other as we can."

"You're right," Fransue answered. "But first, let's set down some rules. Rule number one, don't read my diary."

"You know I would never do that," said Suefran with an air of insincerity. "Rule number two. You're Jewish now, so hands off the pork."

Fransue gasped. "What? No hot dogs? No pork chops?"

"You got it," Suefran replied.

"You can't stop me from eating pork," said Fransue indignantly.

"You can't stop me from reading your diary," Suefran retorted.

"Touch my diary and you're dead, Francine!" Fransue growled.

"Go ahead," said Suefran fearlessly. "Beat up an HIV-positive girl with a broken arm."

After a long, thoughtful pause, Fransue said, "Okay, okay. No pork."

"What's the situation with that, anyway?" Suefran asked.

"Situation with what?"

"You know, HIV."

"Oh." Fransue paused. "Still positive. Your magic unicorn horn didn't work, so you'll have to take the drugs regularly."

In Sue Ellen's head, Francine's mind once again wondered how the same horn that had restored Marina's memories and turned D.W. into a unicorn, could have failed to defeat a simple virus. She had been there...she had watched Sue Ellen make the wish...

"And I know what you're gonna ask next," Fransue went on. "The doctor says that if I keep taking the drugs, then I have a good chance of a normal lifespan. So as long as you're in my body, you have to keep taking them."

"I will," said Suefran. "I promise."

"Anything else?"

"Nope. Have fun at temple tomorrow."

Fransue groaned as she replaced the phone receiver.

(To be continued...)


	4. The New Moo

"Wake up, Frankie."  
  
Sue Ellen pushed open her heavy eyelids to find, to her chagrin, that she was still staring up at the David Beckham poster through Francine's eyes.  
  
Catherine, wearing a red dress, was waving a hand in front of her face. "It's almost time for temple," she said chirpily.  
  
"I don't want to go to temple," Fransue grumbled.  
  
"That's what you say every morning," said Catherine, "but you end up going anyway. Now get your butt out of bed."  
  
As Fransue grudgingly made preparations for the morning's worship services, Francine was trying to pull off Sue Ellen's sleepwear so that she could give Sue Ellen's body a bath. The fact that she now had only one good arm made it a strenuous task, but she eventually managed to take everything off and climb into the tub.  
  
She felt pangs of compassion when she saw the large scars that had been left on Sue Ellen's body by the plane accident. They were her scars now, although she had done nothing to earn them.  
  
Bathing with a cast on one arm was nothing new. However, once she had washed and dried herself, and taken hair brush in hand, she had to endure what felt like the greatest test of her life. Sue Ellen's rigid locks resisted her efforts to coiffe them. No matter how long, hard, or strategically she brushed them, she was always left with a chaotic mess. It was as if all the strands of her hair were electromagnetically repelling each other. She finally gave up and laid the brush down next to the sink.  
  
After hastily dressing herself in one of Sue Ellen's green blouses, Suefran hurried out of the Armstrong house in time to catch the well-dressed Frenskys as they were strolling down the sidewalk toward the Jewish temple. Fransue, wearing a blue dress and a sulky expression, looked at Suefran with horror when the girl came up alongside her.  
  
"You look like you stuck your finger in a socket," Fransue observed. "Did you use the conditioner?"  
  
"Uh, no," Suefran replied. "Just the shampoo."  
  
"Well, go back and do it again," Fransue told her. "And when you're done, why don't you go back to the barn and look for clues? I'd go with you, but my religious freedom has just been taken away."  
  
"Uh, sure," Suefran responded. As she turned back toward the Armstrong house, she marveled at how Sue Ellen had succeeded at styling her Francine hair so flawlessly.  
  
She went through the laborious process of washing her hair again, but found it easier to shape after she had applied lavish amounts of conditioner. After wrapping two hairbands around her curls to keep them from wandering into her face, she gazed into the mirror and beheld a rough approximation to the Sue Ellen look that she was accustomed to.  
  
"It's just not me," she muttered to herself. The hair puffs were crooked and unequal in size, but she didn't feel like bothering to adjust them.  
  
As she walked along the street in the direction of the old barn, she was greeted by Arthur and D.W., who were rolling snowballs in their yard under the watchful eyes of their mother.  
  
"Hey, Sue Ellen," Arthur called. "Where are you going?"  
  
"I'm going to look for clues...I mean, shoes," Suefran replied. She felt an urge to tell the boy that she was really Francine, but knew that she would only be met with ridicule.  
  
"If you're looking for shoes, why don't you come to the mall with us?" said Arthur as he placed one mound of snow upon another to form the lower part of a snowman. "We're leaving at eleven."  
  
"We're gonna see the new Mary Moo Cow!" D.W. cried with glee.  
  
"There's a new one?" Suefran seemed pleasantly surprised.  
  
"Yeah," Arthur answered. "New episodes and everything. Now it's called the New Moo Revue. But it's still a baby show."  
  
"Hmph!" grunted D.W.  
  
"Don't be so hard on it," Suefran told Arthur. "I loved that show when I was five."  
  
"When you were five?" Arthur repeated. "But you weren't in the country then."  
  
"Uh...right," Suefran stammered. "There was a show like it in the countries where I lived. It was called...it was called Linda the Lemur. Yeah, that's right."  
  
"What's a lemur?" asked D.W. curiously.  
  
"It's, uh, a little animal," Suefran replied.  
  
"Where does it live?" Arthur inquired.  
  
"Um...uh..."  
  
Arthur stared at her, impatient with the display of ignorance by the girl who appeared to him as Sue Ellen.  
  
"Somewhere in Asia," Suefran finally said. "I don't remember exactly. I was only five, you know." She started to walk away. "I'll see you at eleven."  
  
----  
  
As Suefran scoured the inside of the abandoned barn and its surroundings, Fransue sat restlessly on a pew next to the Frenskys, doing her best to ignore a sermon on the Book of Jonah delivered by Rabbi Moncton, an elderly giraffe man with faded spots and a bowed neck.  
  
"Blah blah blah Nineveh blah blah Jonah blah blah whale blah blah prayed blah blah," droned the rabbi. It was the most boring sermon Sue Ellen had ever heard, and she had attended almost every type of religious service in existence. She wished with all her heart that she could go back to her own body, broken arm and all. For as long as she remained a Frensky, she would have to suffer this torment every week...  
  
At last the sermon came to an end; Fransue felt as though she had missed two birthdays and a Christmas while sitting there. As the people slowly filed out of the temple building, Rabbi Moncton approached the Frenskys and greeted them. "Good to see you, Oliver, Linda," he said, and his voice sounded as flat as it had when he was preaching. "And little Francine." He laid a hand on Fransue's head and rubbed her hair, making her feel very uncomfortable.  
  
She decided to use this opportunity to stir up a bit of controversy. "Mr. Rabbi, sir," she said innocently, "it's not possible for a whale to swallow a man. Whales may be large, but they have small throats."  
  
The rabbi shot her a puzzled look. "Are you sure about that?"  
  
"I read a book about marine life," Fransue replied. "Oceanography is one of my favorite subjects."  
  
Rabbi Moncton smiled condescendingly at her. "Well, maybe God made a whale with a big throat. A super whale."  
  
"Maybe," Fransue went on, "but even then, there's no way a man could survive in a whale's stomach for three days. He'd be digested." Francine's parents looked at the rabbi with embarrassed and apologetic expressions.  
  
"Not if it was a robot whale," said the old giraffe man.  
  
It dawned on Fransue that the rabbi was not taking her seriously, but treating her like an unintelligent child. "Uh...right," she said sarcastically. "A robot whale. From outer space. Yeah, that explains it. Thanks, Mr. Rabbi."  
  
As she departed the building with her new family, Mr. Frensky gave her a scolding look. "I don't think you should ask the rabbi questions like that, Frankie."  
  
"You're right," said Fransue petulantly. "I should ask someone who knows more."  
  
Mrs. Frensky flicked her on the shoulder to show her disapproval. Then Catherine spoke up. "Well, it could have been a robot whale. I mean, God could do that, right?"  
  
Fransue rolled her eyes.  
  
----  
  
Having searched the old barn in vain for any clue to the identity of the masked girl (or boy?) who had deprived her of her body, Suefran joined Arthur, D.W., and their mother as they journeyed to the mall to shop and meet with Mary Moo Cow.  
  
As they walked past the shops, Suefran's eye was distracted by the sight of a child-sized window mannequin clad in a pair of rather tight-fitting blue jeans. She wished more than anything that she could buy a pair that would fit Sue Ellen's legs, so that she could dispense with the awkward-feeling blouse and skirt, and wear something that felt natural. But her parents--the Armstrongs, that is--weren't likely to allow their daughter to waste money on trying to look like Francine. She sighed. If only she had exchanged bodies with Muffy instead...  
  
"You've been acting different today, Sue Ellen," she heard Arthur saying. "I did an Internet search and found out that lemurs live in Madagascar. I thought you'd been there."  
  
"I, uh, wasn't there for very long," Suefran responded.  
  
"I saw a picture of a lemur," said D.W. "It was really cute. Mom, can I get a pet lemur?"  
  
"Sure," Mrs. Read replied. "As soon as we move to Madagascar."  
  
Suefran felt her left arm start to throb. It was a dull ache, no different from what she had felt in her own right arm when it was broken. She wondered what the arm would look like when the cast came off. Sue Ellen's break had been much worse than hers...  
  
D.W. cried out with joy when she saw a line of children in the center court of the mall, standing in front of a nursery-like ring where a person in a cow costume was holding court. "Look, Mom! It's Mary Moo Cow!"  
  
"Let's go!" Mrs. Read smiled and took her daughter by the hand.  
  
Arthur groaned. "Oh, great."  
  
Dragging her mother along, D.W. hurried to the back of the line of children, who appeared to be mostly kindergarten-age. To her surprise, the child in front of her turned out to be her schoolmate Dallin Cooper.  
  
"D.W.!" he exclaimed as he turned around.  
  
"Hi, Dallin!" D.W. greeted him. "Isn't this great? We get to meet the new Mary Moo Cow! You know, when the old Mary Moo Cow quit, I got to see her without her costume."  
  
"No way!" said the little duck boy in astonishment. Arthur, who was standing nearby with Suefran and Mrs. Read, looked around and saw Quinn and Odette Cooper a short distance away. The two older girls appeared rather embarrassed to be present at this event.  
  
"She was a really nice lady," D.W. told Dallin. "She told me she would try to bring the show back, and she did."  
  
Arthur turned to Suefran. "I never could figure out why the show was cancelled just because the woman in the costume quit," he remarked.  
  
Suefran seemed not to hear him. She was listening raptly to the treacly sweet voice emerging from the cow outfit.  
  
"What's your name, little girl?" Mary asked the red-haired rabbit girl who stood before her.  
  
"My name's Marissa," said the excited moppet. "M-A-R-I-S-S-A."  
  
"That voice," Suefran half-whispered. She turned to face Arthur. "That voice sounds awfully familiar."  
  
Arthur strained his ears. "You're right, it does," he said after several seconds.  
  
"What's your name, little boy?" asked Mary.  
  
"Dallin," was the reply. "D-A-L-L-I-N."  
  
"Dallin, can you sing the Mary Moo Cow song?"  
  
Dallin and D.W. immediately erupted into song. "Mary Moo Cow, Mary Moo Cow, we love you, Mary Moo..."  
  
Then Arthur, standing a few feet away from D.W., suddenly recognized the cow's voice. "Mrs. Stiles?" he said loudly. "You're the new Mary Moo Cow?"  
  
The costumed cow stopped singing along with D.W. and Dallin, and turned her grinning face toward Arthur.  
  
(To be continued...) 


	5. Cast Off

Mary Moo Cow only looked at Arthur for a second before turning her attention to the waiting children. "I'm very glad to meet you, Dallin," she said to the duck boy, who then ran in the direction of his sisters, smiling ecstatically.  
  
"What's your name, little girl?" Mary asked in her sickeningly sweet affected voice.  
  
"My name's D.W.," came the answer. "D-W."  
  
"You're right, Arthur," said Suefran as she and Arthur walked away from the nursery ring. "I'm sure that's Mrs. Stiles in that costume."  
  
"I wonder why she didn't tell us about her career change," Arthur mused.  
  
"Well, we didn't exactly ask her, did we?" Suefran noted.  
  
Shortly D.W. and Mrs. Read joined them, and they were on their way to the toy store.  
  
"I wonder how she remembers you," Arthur said to Suefran. "You were acting up and being a bully when she stopped teaching us."  
  
"That wasn't me," Suefran replied. "Uh, I mean, that wasn't the real me. I was going through a phase. I'm usually very nice."  
  
"Yeah, right," said Arthur, grinning facetiously.  
  
Suefran made a fist with her right hand. "Don't push me, Arthur!" she growled threateningly.  
  
Arthur's smile disappeared. His pupils widened. It seemed to him for a moment that Sue Ellen was perfectly imitating...no, channeling...Francine.  
  
Suefran lowered her fist when she observed Arthur's fearful expression. "Are you okay?" she asked with concern. "I wasn't really gonna hit you."  
  
"I'm fine," said Arthur as he rounded the corner into the toy shop. "It's just for a minute there, I thought Francine had taken over your body."  
  
"Would you believe me if I told you she has?" asked Suefran earnestly.  
  
"No."  
  
Arthur and D.W. quickly made their toy selections, and then Mrs. Read led the three children back to the parking lot. As they drove along, Arthur was ripping the packaging from his Martian Bunny action figure, while D.W., seated between him and Suefran, was admiring the new Princess Peach watch on her wrist. "It's a good thing Miss Cosma taught us how to tell time," she remarked.  
  
Arthur began to wave around the green-skinned bunny toy as if it was flying, then held it in front of Suefran. "I can look into your mind," he intoned ominously. "You are hiding a deep, dark secret." Suefran giggled.  
  
"She's in love with you," said D.W. "When are you gonna kiss her again, Arthur?"  
  
Suefran suddenly had trouble breathing. It all came back to her...seeing Arthur and Sue Ellen kissing repeatedly at the playground...what if Arthur still had feelings for the girl?  
  
"I'm not in love with Arthur!" she snapped at D.W.  
  
"Arthur and Sue Ellen sitting in a tree..." D.W. began to chant.  
  
"Shut up!" cried Suefran.  
  
"Are you all right, Sue Ellen?" asked Arthur as he dropped the action figure into his lap. "You've been so...so hot-tempered today."  
  
Suefran regained her composure and asked Arthur a serious question. "Arthur, how long have we known each other?"  
  
"A little over a year," Arthur replied. "Though it feels like I've known you longer."  
  
Suefran fell silent. It occurred to her that she had been talking like Francine, despite having Sue Ellen's outward appearance.  
  
Mrs. Read pulled into the driveway at her house, and she and the kids were soon inside. As Arthur hurried to his room to add Martian Bunny to his Bunny League toy collection, and Mrs. Read joined her husband in the kitchen, Suefran followed D.W. into her bedroom.  
  
D.W. jumped onto her bed and looked at her watch. "It's...11:53," she stated proudly, then flashed her timepiece at Suefran for verification.  
  
"Yeah, that's right," the girl answered. "Very good."  
  
"Does your arm hurt?" D.W. asked her.  
  
"Yeah, just a little." Suefran became serious again. "D.W., do you still have the unicorn horn that I...er, Francine gave you for Christmas?"  
  
"Yeah." D.W. leaped from her bed. "It's in my toy chest."  
  
"Have you made any more wishes on it?" asked Suefran.  
  
"Nope." D.W. reached into the chest and pulled out the spiral-shaped horn, which still had a phosphorescent glow about it.  
  
"I'd like to look at it," Suefran requested.  
  
D.W. handed her the horn. "Maybe you could wish for your arm to be better," she suggested.  
  
As Suefran walked out of D.W.'s room, holding the unicorn horn in front of her, she deliberated over her possible courses of action. If it was good for one more wish, as she suspected and hoped, then she could use it to wish that she had her own body again. But that wouldn't affect Sue Ellen...there would be two Francines...no, she couldn't do it.  
  
She walked into the upstairs bathroom, kicked the door closed, and held the horn aloft with her right hand. "I wish I was cured of HIV," she said.  
  
She felt silly. Sue Ellen had made the exact same wish, but her tests had turned up positive notwithstanding. Greta had told her that unicorn magic was bound by many rules and regulations. Was there a limitation on which diseases could be cured? There was one way to find out...make a different wish, one that couldn't possibly be denied.  
  
She decided to take D.W.'s suggestion. "I wish my arm wasn't broken."  
  
What happened next shocked her to the very core. There was a sound like a sledgehammer crushing rocks, and the cast on her left arm was replaced with broken pieces of plaster with fragments of signatures written on them. She dropped the unicorn horn in terror.  
  
Then she realized that it was a good thing that had happened.  
  
Plaster rubble, metal pins, and screws were strewn across the bathroom floor to the left of her. She started to brush the dust and chunks off of her left arm. The throbbing pain had disappeared. To her surprise, the surface of her once-broken arm had the color and tone of healthy skin, as if it had never lost contact with the sun. There were no scars, or bruises, or pins sticking out.  
  
She bent her left arm and wiggled her fingers. They worked perfectly. The wish had succeeded.  
  
Moments later, Mrs. Read gasped in fear when she saw Sue Ellen standing in front of the upstairs bathroom door, waving her cast-free left arm in the air and smiling triumphantly.  
  
----  
  
"I've never seen anything like this," remarked Dr. Leach, a dog woman who was examining X-rays of Suefran's left arm. "It's completely healed. Not only that, but it looks like it was never broken."  
  
"It's a miracle," said Mrs. Armstrong as she gazed at the girl she believed to be her daughter, who sat bare-chested on an examination table. "A bona-fide miracle."  
  
"There were pins in your arm," the doctor said to Suefran. "What happened to them?"  
  
"They, er, fell out," the girl replied.  
  
"I don't know what to say." Dr. Leach stared at the X-rays in amazement. "If I were you, I'd walk out of here and buy a lottery ticket."  
  
Suefran grabbed the undershirt lying next to her and pulled it over her upper body with both hands. Having two functioning arms would temporarily alleviate the inconvenience of being in Sue Ellen's body, she thought, but it still didn't address the long-term issues.  
  
----  
  
As soon as she had returned to the Armstrong residence, Suefran made a call to the Frensky apartment and was notified that Francine was at Arthur's house. She ran there as fast as she could; when she entered, she saw a large number of children gathered in the living room, most of them sitting on the floor. They included Arthur, D.W., Fransue (still wearing the blue dress), Beat, Binky, Fern, George, Alan, Prunella, Marina, and a boy Suefran had never seen before. He was a dark-complexioned bear boy, about the same age as the other children, clad in a shirt with colorful patterns on it.  
  
When Fransue saw that Suefran wasn't wearing her cast, she jumped to her feet and stared in disbelieving shock. "Y-your cast!" she exclaimed. "Where is it? What are you doing? Put it back on!"  
  
"My arm's all better," said Suefran, bending her left arm and wiggling her fingers to demonstrate.  
  
"You're crazy!" Fransue roared indignantly. "I'm calling your mother...I mean, my mother."  
  
As she rushed to the phone, Suefran strolled casually into the living room, where the other kids had stood up and were gazing at her castless arm in amazement--all except for the blind Marina and the new boy.  
  
"My name's Fr...uh, Sue Ellen," she said to him in a friendly voice.  
  
The dark-skinned boy stood and held out his hand in greeting.  
  
"My name is Adil Faruk," he said in halting English. "I am from Turkey."  
  
(To be continued...) 


	6. Adil Arrives

Suefran took Adil's hand and shook it. "You must be the new exchange student. Arthur told me you were coming."  
  
"I am pleased to meet you, Sue Alan," said the Turkish boy.  
  
In the meantime, Alan and Beat were curiously examining Suefran's apparently healed left arm. "How did you get the cast off so quickly?" Alan asked in wonder.  
  
Suefran dared not tell them the truth about the unicorn horn, so she made something up. "It's, uh, a new type of cast. A skin cast. It looks like skin. That's why there are no scars."  
  
Adil widened his eyes in amazement. "American medicine is like magic to me," he remarked.  
  
"Yeah, that's exactly what it is," Suefran answered. "Magic."  
  
Beat ran her fingers over Suefran's left arm. "I've never heard of a skin cast," she said warily.  
  
"I'm the first to get one," Suefran explained. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Fransue coming back into the room with a look of astonishment.  
  
"I just talked to your mom," she told Suefran. "I don't know how you did it, but your arm is healed."  
  
Before she had a chance to say more, Arthur grabbed her by the arm, pulled her through the crowd of kids, and led her into the guest bedroom. When he had closed the door behind them, he glared at her in outrage.  
  
"Did you tell Sue Ellen about the unicorns?" he demanded.  
  
"Unicorns?" Fransue appeared confused. "What unicorns?"  
  
"You know what I'm talking about!" Arthur bellowed. "This is serious, Francine. We don't want another mess like the one with Greta and D.W. Guess what was lying on the bathroom floor next to all the little pieces of Sue Ellen's cast? A unicorn horn! I think she used it to unbreak her arm. And I didn't tell her about it, so it must have been you."  
  
Fransue shook her head incredulously. "There's no such thing as unicorns, Arthur."  
  
"What's the matter with you?" yelled Arthur, now angrier than ever. "You were there when D.W. turned into a unicorn. You were there when we all went before the Unicorn Council to change her back."  
  
The two kids stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Fransue began to laugh uproariously. "Stop laughing!" Arthur growled at her.  
  
"Okay, Arthur," Fransue choked out between giggles. "If you say unicorns are real, I believe you. But I want you to believe something too. I want you to believe that it's possible for two people to switch bodies."  
  
Arthur's jaw dropped. "Wh-what?"  
  
Fransue became serious. "I'm really Sue Ellen, and Sue Ellen is really Francine. Can you believe that?"  
  
For several seconds Arthur's jaw remained frozen in the dropped position.  
  
"Hello?" Fransue waved a hand in front of Arthur's face. "Earth to Arthur. Come in."  
  
Finally Arthur began to chuckle. "Oh, I get it now. This is one of those personality switch things. Like when Buster and I started acting like each other. That explains why Sue Ellen has been such a grouch today."  
  
"I'm telling the truth!" Fransue insisted. "Francine and I went out to this old barn, and a girl with a mask gassed us, and we woke up in each other's bodies. I swear I'm not making this up."  
  
Arthur rolled his eyes, sighed, and reached for the doorknob. As he exited the guest bedroom with Fransue close behind him, he heard Adil relating a familiar story to the other kids: "During the battle of Gallipoli, a piece of, uh, sharpnel hit Ataturk over his heart, but the watch in his pocket saved his life."  
  
"Your English is very good," Prunella complimented him. She and the other kids were seated in a circle on the floor while Adil stood before them, sharing stories of Turkey.  
  
"Thank you, Prunilla," Adil replied. "I learned to speak English in the Turkish school. I wanted to come to America."  
  
----  
  
"Have you ever been to Turkey?" Suefran asked Fransue as the two girls walked down the street together after the meeting with Adil.  
  
"Yeah, I have," Fransue replied. "We stopped at Ankara and visited the Ataturk Mausoleum. Not much there except for a dead guy."  
  
They walked a little further, their feet splashing in the puddles of melted snow. Then Fransue could contain her curiosity no longer.  
  
"Did you really use a unicorn horn to fix your arm?" she asked Suefran.  
  
"Unicorns aren't real," the girl answered.  
  
"That's not what Arthur believes," Fransue pointed out. "He says you two had some kind of experience with unicorns."  
  
Suefran sighed. "It wasn't a pleasant one. Let's not go there, okay?"  
  
"Okay," said Fransue somberly.  
  
They walked in silence for a minute, and then Fransue had another idea. "If unicorns have magical powers, then maybe we can get them to switch us back."  
  
"Forget it!" Suefran snapped at her. "I don't want to mess with unicorns anymore. Their powers are dangerous. For all we know, that girl in the mask might have been one of them."  
  
"Maybe she was Greta," Fransue postulated.  
  
Suefran froze in her tracks and gaped at Fransue.  
  
"So that's what Fern was talking about," said Fransue confidently. "D.W.'s face changed so she looked just like Greta. It's because Greta's a unicorn, and she turned D.W. into one. That's it, isn't it?"  
  
"Keep your voice down," Suefran admonished her. "The last time we told someone Greta's secret, we almost blew up the world."  
  
"I think we should ask Greta if she can switch us back," Fransue suggested, "or if she knows how we got switched."  
  
"I don't think Greta would be happy to hear from me," said Suefran gloomily. "Arthur and I had to betray her in order to turn D.W. back into an aardvark. It wouldn't surprise me if she switched us to get revenge on me."  
  
"It can't hurt to ask her," Fransue insisted.  
  
----  
  
Later that day, as Fern watched a mystery movie on TV, Fransue and Suefran huddled together in front of her computer. They had just initiated a chat room conversation with Fern's mysterious cyber friend, Greta.  
  
HI FERN, was the first line of text that appeared in the window.  
  
Suefran began to type. THIS ISN'T FERN. THIS IS FRANCINE.  
  
After a few seconds, during which Suefran imagined that Greta was probably fuming with anger, another line appeared: HI FRANCINE. NEVER THOUGHT I'D HEAR FROM YOU AGAIN.  
  
Suefran smiled. "I guess she's forgiven me," she said to Fransue.  
  
She then typed some more, and felt grateful that she now had the use of both hands. IS THERE A UNICORN SPELL THAT SWITCHES TWO PEOPLE'S BODIES?  
  
The response came quickly: WHO ARE YOU THINKING OF SWITCHING?  
  
Suefran giggled and typed back, NOBODY. TWO PEOPLE I KNOW HAVE BEEN SWITCHED.  
  
Greta rejoined with, YOU AND WHO ELSE? A BOY, I HOPE.  
  
"That wasn't nice," Fransue complained.  
  
"It's an inside joke," said Suefran as she typed, ME AND SUE ELLEN.  
  
There was a delay of about half a minute, while the two switched girls grumbled impatiently. Then an answer from Greta came: THERE'S NO UNICORN SPELL TO SWITCH PEOPLE'S BODIES. AND IF THERE WERE ONE, IT WOULD BE FORBIDDEN.  
  
Suefran sighed with disappointment. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO WOULD BE CAPABLE OF THIS? she typed.  
  
EVEN IF I KNEW HOW TO HELP YOU, I'M BARRED FROM VISITING ELWOOD CITY FOR THE NEXT ONE HUNDRED YEARS, Greta replied. YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN. SORRY.  
  
Greta's name vanished from the list of chat participants. "Well, that was a waste of time," Fransue groused.  
  
(To be continued...) 


	7. Morning Tea

When Francine awoke on Sunday morning in Sue Ellen's room, she felt as if she was on a vacation, sleeping in a friend's or relative's house. If she had ever been in a hotel, she might have compared the sensation to being in a hotel. The posters of exotic locations decorating the walls certainly supported such an illusion. She wondered if there would ever come a day when technology would allow a person to take a few days of vacation in someone else's body. It was an intriguing thought...for the right amount of money, you could spend a little time in the body of your favorite celebrity or sports star. But something gave Francine the feeling that her residence in Sue Ellen's body was not a vacation, but rather a permanent move...  
  
But whatever the case might be, she had to live with it, and Sue Ellen was probably having an equally hard time in Francine's body. The girl was accustomed to travel, and had never really called one country home; but now she faced the prospect of living in the same town for years on end, trapped as the daughter of a garbage man.  
  
Suefran felt her long orange curls dance about her shoulders as she climbed out of the bed. As she opened the bedroom door and peered outside, she saw that two guests had joined her parents for morning tea. Two people whose relationship she had often wondered about, but had not followed closely--Nigel Ratburn and Carla Fuente.  
  
She stepped out of the bedroom, barefooted, rubbing the drowsiness from her eyes. "Good morning, Sue Ellen!" Carla cried with delight upon seeing the girl whose nanny she had once been. She was wearing a conservative floral dress and black high-heeled shoes, as if she intended to leave for church soon.  
  
"Uh, hi, Carla," said Suefran with a yawn. "Hello, Mr. Ratburn."  
  
"Why don't you call me Nigel?" asked Mr. Ratburn as the groggy girl seated herself next to him on the couch. Across from her the Armstrongs sat together in the love seat, sipping tea.  
  
"You don't look very happy to see us," Carla noted.  
  
"The last time we came to visit," Mr. Ratburn added, "you were so excited, I was afraid you would drool on us."  
  
"Hmm." Suefran tried to come up with an excuse for her lack of enthusiasm. "Maybe I just need a little caffeine. How about some of that tea, Mom?"  
  
"You'll stunt your growth," Mrs. Armstrong warned her.  
  
Suefran turned to Carla and Nigel, and brushed a few curls from her face. "So, I hear you two are engaged again," she said idly.  
  
"More or less," replied Mr. Ratburn as he lifted a cup of tea from a coaster on the coffee table. "It depends on how long I remain a free man."  
  
"Of course we're engaged." Carla rubbed the top of Nigel's head with her knuckles. "You're my sweet jailbird of paradise."  
  
"What have you been doing since you stopped teaching at Lakewood?" Suefran asked Nigel.  
  
"Nothing," Mr. Ratburn answered somberly. "My life's pretty much on hold until the court decides my fate."  
  
"What about your sister?" Suefran pressed him.  
  
"I have no idea where she is," Nigel replied, "and normally I would say that's the way I like it. Wherever she is, she's only making things worse for herself...and Muffy, too." He took another sip of tea.  
  
"The important thing is, the two of you are together again," Suefran remarked. Her lips curled upwards as she reminisced about the clever matchmaking scheme she had coordinated, without which these two lovebirds might never have met...  
  
"I couldn't believe it when I learned that it was all Francine's idea," Carla said to Nigel. She turned to Suefran and added with a chuckle, "You, on the other hand, were violently opposed to it."  
  
Suefran's heart sank. She felt as if someone had strapped her to a gurney and pried her eyelids open, and was forcing her to stare at another girl's reflection in a mirror.  
  
"Why don't you go take your bath, Sue Ellen?" Mrs. Armstrong asked her. "You look like something the cat dragged in."  
  
Another disadvantage of being in Sue Ellen's body...constant cat jokes...  
  
"Uh, yeah, I think I will," she muttered, lowering herself from the couch.  
  
On the way to the bathtub, she stopped to look into the mirror at the acres of straggly curls adorning her new head. She thought about cutting them all off, but it occurred to her that the real Sue Ellen, despite inhabiting Francine's body, was probably still capable of tearing out her throat.  
  
----  
  
More capable than she imagined. At that moment, Fransue was stepping out of the dressing room at the local dojo, dressed in a white robe and a white belt. She smiled, put her hands together, and bowed politely to the other kids, who ranged in age from five to twelve. At the other end of the training room, Mrs. Frensky was chatting with the instructor, a Korean cat man who wore a black belt and a badge reading, TAE ONE ON STUDIOS.  
  
"I hope this time she takes it seriously and doesn't quit after two lessons," said Mrs. Frensky.  
  
"I will do my best to motivate her," replied the instructor.  
  
As Mrs. Frensky departed from the building, the Korean man approached the sparring students and clapped his hands together. "Let us begin," he ordered. All the kids, including Fransue, quickly assumed lotus positions and formed a line in front of the instructor.  
  
"A new student has joined us today," the man announced, gesturing at Fransue. "This is Miss Francine Frenchy."  
  
Fransue grinned and waved at the other pupils, not noticing the fact that the instructor had mispronounced Francine's last name.  
  
"Let us meditate," said the teacher as he seemed to melt into a kneeling position.  
  
Fransue closed her eyes. Sue Ellen had found it difficult to avoid worrying ever since she had been thrust into Francine's body, so clearing her mind on this occasion was a daunting challenge. She decided to make it easier by dwelling on the positives of the situation. She was taller now--no longer the shortest fourth-grader at Lakewood--which might prove to be an advantage. Having ears on the sides of her head would likely help her to maintain better balance, something she had always struggled with.  
  
"All rise," the instructor commanded. The kids pushed themselves to their feet in unison. "We will start with the basic blocks and punches, so that Francine may learn."  
  
The lesson began, and to the teacher's surprise, Fransue matched all of the other pupils for speed and coordination in all the basic moves. She herself was no less surprised, considering that she had been absent from lessons for several months due to her broken arm. She could only conclude that Francine's bodily composition lent itself better to the demands of martial arts.  
  
She felt freer than ever before. Maybe she would enjoy this new life after all...  
  
----  
  
That afternoon, Arthur and D.W. hurried through the door into the Read house, where several of their musical companions were waiting in the living room. They yanked off their coats and placed them on the rack, then went to greet Fern, Sue Ellen, Francine, Alan, and Van, who were seated in chairs, on the couch, or in a wheelchair. Francine's drum set had been mounted next to the piano, and the cases for Alan's cello and Sue Ellen's saxophone were leaning against a wall.  
  
"So, what did you find out?" Suefran asked Arthur.  
  
"She says it wasn't her," Arthur replied as he sat down on the piano bench. "But I could swear that was her voice."  
  
"That's disappointing," Fern remarked. "When you told me, I thought maybe she was trying to get back into show business."  
  
"What's this you're talking about?" asked Alan as he picked up his cello case and opened it. D.W. jumped into the chair he had been sitting in, and clasped her hands in expectation of hearing some lively jazz music. Adil, the Turkish exchange student, emerged from the guest bedroom and sat next to her.  
  
"Arthur and I were at the mall yesterday," explained Suefran as she moved into the chair behind Francine's drums. "We both thought it was Mrs. Stiles in the Mary Moo Cow costume."  
  
"Sue Ellen, you're not playing the drums, are you?" Fern asked Suefran.  
  
"Yes, I am," Suefran answered as she grasped the drumsticks. "Now that my arm's better, I thought I'd experiment with a different instrument."  
  
"Me, too," said Fransue, who was pulling Sue Ellen's saxophone from its case.  
  
"I don't care what instrument you're playing," Van told Suefran. "It's good to have you back in the group."  
  
Then, as Fern and Van watched from their seats, the Sue E. Armstrong Quartet began to play--Arthur on piano, Alan on bass, Sue Ellen on drums, and Francine on sax. They only played for a minute before Arthur and Alan stopped and began to stare at Francine and Sue Ellen in wonder and disbelief.  
  
"Whoa, whoa!" exclaimed Arthur. Francine removed the sax from her mouth, and Sue Ellen lowered her drumsticks.  
  
"Wow!" Alan marveled. "If that was an experiment, I'd say it was successful."  
  
"How did you two get so good on each other's instruments?" asked the astonished Arthur. "I've never seen you practice on anything but your own."  
  
Fransue and Suefran both grinned smugly at Arthur.  
  
"Are you ready to believe us now?" Fransue asked him.  
  
(To be continued...) 


	8. Adil's Valentine

Monday morning arrived, and the Lakewood kids were converging on the elementary school for another day of learning and fun. Arthur was walking alongside Adil, who wore a baggy brown sweater and a cap that looked like an extension of it.

Upon arriving at the front stairway, Arthur made a sweeping gesture with his hands. "This is Lakewood Elementary," he announced pompously. "This is where you'll be going to school."

Adil smiled wonderingly. "It is more beautiful than my school in Turkey," he commented.

As Arthur told Adil of the many advantages of attending an American school, three larger kids approached the pair and stood in front of them. They were Binky, Molly, and Rattles.

"Hey, it's Arthur and his pen pal," said Binky with a mocking smile.

"Where you from, kid?" Molly asked Adil.

"I am from Turkey," Adil replied innocently.

"Did you hear that?" Molly turned to Rattles and grinned. "He says he's a turkey."

"No, that's not what he said," Binky corrected her. "He's FROM Turkey, you're A turkey."

"Leave him alone, guys," Arthur warned them.

Rattles shrugged. "Hey, we're just trying to welcome him to America in a diplomatic-like sort of way."

"I've got an English word to teach you," said Binky, bending over so that his face was even with Adil's. "Doofus. Call somebody a doofus, and they'll be your friend for life."

"Doofus," Adil repeated.

"Don't listen to him," Arthur said to Adil. "Doofus means stupid person."

"Well, I'll catch you later, guys." Binky waved politely at Arthur and Adil, and then followed Molly and Rattles up the stairway.

"I am pleased to meet you, doofus," Adil called after Binky.

As Arthur and Adil walked through the school building, they were hailed by Francine and Sue Ellen. They were dressed in their usual clothes, and Sue Ellen's hair puffs were uneven and oddly shaped.

"So, did you think it over?" Suefran asked Arthur as the two girls accompanied him and Adil on their way to Mr. Wald's room.

"Uh, yes, I did," Arthur responded. "Okay, let's suppose you two are really in each other's bodies. What can you do about it?"

"Well, we can try to find a way to switch back," Fransue replied.

"Or we can spend the rest of our lives the way we are," Suefran added.

"The big problem is, we're stuck in each other's families," Fransue lamented. "My dad's a garbage man instead of a diplomat, I'm not allowed to eat pork, and Catherine snores real bad."

"And we can't just trade families," Suefran sighed.

"Or hair," Fransue chimed in.

"But you could switch clothes," Arthur noted.

"They wouldn't fit," Suefran responded. "And our parents won't buy us new clothes just so we can dress like each other."

"At least we can switch instruments," Fransue pointed out.

When the four children arrived in Mr. Wald's classroom, they found that their classmates were all seated at desks, with the teacher preparing his lesson at the front. The walls were covered with large pink hearts, ribbons, and cherubs, in addition to the usual times tables and pictures of U.S. presidents.

As Adil seated himself in a desk next to Arthur, he pointed at a paper heart attached to the wall. "What does it mean, the heart?" he asked in broken English.

"Oh, that's for Valentine's Day," Arthur told him.

"What is Valentine's Day?" Adil inquired curiously.

"It's the day when you choose your valentine," Arthur answered as he pulled a notebook and pencil from his bag.

Adil persisted in his quest for knowledge. "What is my valentine?"

"A girl," Arthur replied. "You choose a girl to be your valentine. You know what a girl is, right?"

"I understand," said Adil. Arthur sighed with relief.

Mr. Wald picked up the clipboard with the roll sheet, and took his usual position in front of the class. "Good morning, students," he said cheerily.

"Good morning, Bud," the children greeted him.

"A new student is joining us today," the teacher announced, then waved his hand at Adil.

The Turkish boy wondered about the meaning of the gesture, until Arthur tapped him on the shoulder. "Stand up and say your name."

Adil complied, rising bashfully to his feet. "My name is Adil Faruk," he said in a weak voice. "I am from Turkey. I live in a city named Batman."

George raised his hand. "Batman? That's a funny name for a city." The kids began to chuckle.

"Isn't that the guy at the baseball game who gives out all the bats?" asked Binky.

"No, it's the guy with pointed ears and fangs on the covers of the magazines," Fern retorted.

"It sounds like the name of a comic-book superhero," Van mused. "You know, a guy who dresses up like a bat and goes around at night fighting..."

He glanced around the room, and saw that the other kids were giving him blank stares. "Uh, never mind," he concluded.

"No more questions, please," Mr. Wald ordered. "You'll have plenty of time to ask Adil questions after class. Adil is here as part of the foreign exchange program because our very own Arthur Read recommended him. Say 'way to go, Arthur', everybody."

"Way to go, Arthur!" the kids chanted.

"Moving on to the roll call," Mr. Wald continued. "Susan Ellen Armstrong."

He watched as Sue Ellen and Francine looked at each other with uncertainty. This went on for several seconds. "If you can't decide which one of you is Sue Ellen," the teacher finally said, "then I'll be Sue Ellen."

Suefran quickly raised her hand. "Here."

"Clark Philip Barnes," Mr. Wald said next.

"Yo," said Binky, pumping his fist.

"Van Wilson Cooper."

"Here," said Van.

"Francine Alice Frensky."

Fransue hesitantly raised her hand. "Here."

"George Harvey Nordgren."

"Here," said George.

"Arthur Timothy Read."

"Here," said Arthur.

"Fern May Walters."

"Last, as usual," was the reply.

"We're very happy that Adil has chosen to join us," said Mr. Wald as he paced back and forth in front of the kids. "We've had a problem lately with students just up and floating away." George blushed.

After an illuminating lecture on the life cycle of butterflies, the kids rose from their desks and began to chat with each other. Most were curious to learn more about the strange Turkish boy. They asked him myriad questions: "Do you ride a camel to school?" "Is your street paved or dirt?" "What do lamb's eyes taste like?" "Will you be my valentine?"

Adil gaped at Fern, who had asked him the last question. "But...I do not know you," he replied nervously.

"My name's Fern," said the grinning poodle girl. "Now you know me. Will you be my valentine?"

"You are not beautiful," Adil answered matter-of-factly. "I must choose a beautiful girl."

Offended, Fern scowled at the foreign boy and walked out of the classroom.

Arthur, suddenly feeling embarrassed, tried to counsel Adil on the finer points of conversing with American girls. "That wasn't the right answer, Adil. You should always tell a girl that she's beautiful."

"But it is wrong to lie," Adil responded.

Flustered, Arthur slapped his forehead and wished he could disappear.

"Who is your valentine, Arthur?" Adil asked him.

"Uh..." Arthur glanced at Francine and Sue Ellen, who were standing next to him. "Francine. She's my valentine every year." Fransue reacted with unease.

The two girls followed Arthur and Adil as they left the classroom. "It's so cool to have a boy from another culture in our class," Fransue gushed. "Arthur, let's not do the same thing this year. You and Fr...Sue Ellen can be valentines, and Adil and I will be valentines."

"But you've been my valentine every year since first grade," Arthur insisted.

"I keep telling you, I'm not really Francine," said Fransue earnestly.

"I keep telling you," Arthur shot back, "you look like Francine to me."

Then he felt someone tugging on his arm. "Arthur!" said Adil, pointing. "Who is that girl?"

Arthur looked in the direction that Adil was pointing, to see Jenna conversing with her teacher, Rodentia Ratburn. "That's Jenna Morgan," he replied. "She's in another class."

"She is beautiful," said Adil wistfully.

Arthur, Sue Ellen, and Francine all gave Adil stunned looks.

(To be continued...) 


	9. DW's Valentine

As Adil wandered off in Jenna's direction, Arthur, Francine, and Sue Ellen looked at each other in disbelief.  
  
"He thinks Jenna's beautiful and Fern's not?" said Fransue. "He's not from another country, he's from another planet!"  
  
"I've seen bowling balls more beautiful than Jenna," Suefran remarked. "And I'm saying that as her friend."  
  
When Adil reached Jenna, the girl stopped talking to Rodentia and regarded him with curiosity. "My name is Adil," he introduced himself. "I am from Turkey."  
  
Jenna smiled. "My name is Jenna. I am from Elwood City."  
  
"My name is Miss Ratburn," said Rodentia. "I like fudge."  
  
When Arthur and the girls caught up with Adil, they found him stammering and stumbling over words in Jenna's presence. The boy was obviously infatuated. Arthur wondered what he saw in the girl, whose hair looked as if someone had drawn a few wavy pencil lines over her head.  
  
"I...I think you are...I..." was all Adil could manage to say.  
  
Jenna, meanwhile, was delighted that the strange boy was showing an interest in her. "Do you have a speech impediment?" she asked him. "That's so cute."  
  
Adil finally sighed in despair and turned away from Jenna. Arthur followed him as he walked back toward the classroom, his head bowed. "Why didn't you ask her to be your valentine?" he asked his foreign friend.  
  
"I...I am afraid..." Adil wrung his hands anxiously. "She is so beautiful..."  
  
----  
  
"Valentine's Day is a week away," Miss Cosma announced to her kindergarten class, which included, as usual, D.W., Nadine, the Tibble twins, Emily, Dallin, and Vicita. "Can anyone tell me what we do on Valentine's Day?"  
  
Tommy raised his hand and bounced in his seat. "Oh, I know! We eat lots of little heart candies!"  
  
"And we write mushy letters and send them to giiiirls," Timmy added.  
  
"My answer's better than your answer," Tommy shot back at him.  
  
"I know, Miss Cosma," said Emily, who was more sedate than the twins. "I choose a boy to be my one true love."  
  
"Ewww!" groaned Tommy and Timmy in unison.  
  
"Choose someone else," Timmy urged.  
  
"I don't want to be your one true love," Tommy protested.  
  
"Okay," said Emily as she brushed a few cookie crumbs from her skirt. "I choose Dallin. He's the only boy left."  
  
"No way, Emily," D.W. retorted. "Dallin's MY valentine."  
  
"Yeah," said the duck boy. "We have it in writing. See?" He held up a small sheet of paper with the words DW ANB DALN R VALUNTINS written on it. "It's all legal."  
  
"Dallin and I saw Mary Moo Cow together," D.W. related. "That's when we knew we were meant for each other."  
  
Emily began to squirm in her seat. "Miss Cosma!" she whined. "There's no more boys!"  
  
The teacher, who was wearing a loud blue sweater with a large pink heart embroidered on the front, gave the Tibble boys a warm but stern smile. "Tommy? Timmy? Are you sure you don't want to pick a girl to be your valentine?"  
  
"Girls are icky," said Tommy. "I pick Timmy to be my valentine."  
  
"Yeah," Timmy concurred.  
  
"It doesn't work that way," Miss Cosma informed them. "You have to pick a girl."  
  
"Do I have to kiss her?" asked Timmy with disgust.  
  
"No, you don't," Miss Cosma answered.  
  
"Okay." Timmy thought for a second. "I pick Vicita. She's cute."  
  
"I pick Nadine," said Tommy. "She's got a tail, and tails are cool."  
  
Emily once again started to squirm and whine. "Miss Cosma, nobody picked me!"  
  
"You'll have to find another boy," said the Romanian chipmunk woman.  
  
"I don't know any boys!" Emily began to cry and pout.  
  
"It's okay, Emily," said Miss Cosma wearily. "I'll find you a boy."  
  
As she dried the little rabbit girl's tears, Nadine came up with a suggestion. "Maybe you can find a boy on the Internet, Emily."  
  
"I hate Valentine's Day," groused Emily when she had calmed down a little. "I wish it was Christmas again. I don't have to find a boy for Christmas."  
  
Emily sulked throughout the morning's activities. When playtime arrived, Dallin came up to D.W. as she was constructing a block fortress.  
  
"I made this for you," he said, pulling a small, slightly crumpled paper card from his pocket.  
  
D.W. took it from his hand. The front of the card was covered with paper hearts, and the inside bore the message, ROSSES R RED, VIOLTS R BLU, MARY MOO COW LOVS YOU, AND I DOO TOO.  
  
"This is so sweet!" D.W. gushed. "Dallin, you're my best valentine ever!"  
  
"You're my only valentine ever," said Dallin gleefully.  
  
----  
  
In the meantime, all the kids at Lakewood who hadn't been matched up (and weren't all right with not being matched up) were hunting anxiously for someone of the opposite gender who they could call their own for a week.  
  
In a corner of the playground, Prunella was dispensing advice to Van on how to approach Marina, who was sitting on a nearby bench, her cane resting next to her. "Just go up to her and say something," the rat girl urged him.  
  
"What do I say?" asked Van nervously. "What if I say the wrong thing?"  
  
"There is no wrong thing to say," Prunella told him. "There's just the wrong girl to say it to. Now go on." She patted him on the shoulder encouragingly.  
  
Still uncertain, Van set his wheelchair to minimum speed and slowly rolled in Marina's direction. The blind rabbit girl, upon hearing the familiar motorized whine, said, "Hi, Van, how's it going?"  
  
"Uh, I'm fine," Van answered as he stopped his chair in front of Marina. "How are you?"  
  
"I'm fine, too," was the glib reply.  
  
Van racked his brain, trying to come up with a valentine pick-up line that couldn't possibly offend. Finally he settled on one.  
  
"Hey, Marina, are you...seeing anybody right now?"  
  
He slapped his forehead when he realized his mistake. "D'oh!"  
  
Inside the school building, Arthur and Adil were standing nonchalantly next to a pillar, observing Jenna in the act of opening her locker. The girl, to her delight, found that someone had dropped an envelope through the slots. She quickly opened it and called her friends to witness the blessed event.  
  
"It's a valentine card!" she rejoiced. "And it has my name on it!"  
  
Her friends, which included Fern, Binky, and several kids from her own class, looked at each other as if none of them could remember a previous occasion when Jenna had received a valentine greeting. Arthur and Adil strolled up to the group, acting as if they knew nothing of what was transpiring.  
  
"Dearest Jenna," the cat girl began to read. "I think you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Will you be my valentine? Signed, your secret admirer...Adil Faruk."  
  
Arthur suddenly felt as if his brain was trying to burst out of his skull. As he gasped and wheezed, the smiling Jenna walked over to where the terrified Adil was standing. "Why, yes, Adil," she said sweetly. "I'd love to be your valentine. Thanks for the card." Then she gave him a swift peck on the cheek, and skipped away.  
  
Adil rubbed his hand on his cheek where Jenna's lips had made contact. He felt a warm sensation of relief flooding his body, driving out the fear and unease. His first impulse was to chase after Jenna and further enjoy the pleasure of her company, and he followed it.  
  
Arthur couldn't believe what he had just witnessed. Adil had completely missed the point of being a secret admirer...yet he had succeeded nonetheless.  
  
(To be continued...) 


	10. George's Valentine

"So, do you all have valentines yet?" Arthur asked his friends Binky, George, and Alan as they sat with him in the cafeteria, enjoying their lunches. Adil was also part of the group, but Arthur knew all too well how he had fared. 

"I've got Fern," Alan answered.

"Mavis and I are still going strong," Binky replied cockily.

"Um...uh..." stammered George, whose right antler was still held together with tape and bandages after the ghost incident two weeks earlier.

"What, no valentine?" Arthur taunted him. To his left, Adil placidly grazed on a hummus sandwich while trying to understand as much of the conversation as possible.

"Uh, no." George's face fell. "There's not enough girls in our class. Muffy's gone, Beat's gone..."

"There are lots of girls you can ask," Alan reassured the moose boy.

"Yeah, I guess so," George responded, "but I'm too shy to ask a girl to be my valentine, unless I'm under the mistaken impression that she has a crush on me."

"What about Jenna?" Binky suggested. "Oh, wait, she's taken."

"Who's your valentine, Arthur?" Alan inquired. "Probably Francine again."

"Yeah," Arthur answered, "but she seems to think I should choose Sue Ellen instead. I guess that's because Francine's really Sue Ellen and Sue Ellen's really Francine."

"That's creepy, man," Binky remarked as he took another bite of his peanut butter and more peanut butter sandwich.

Arthur turned to George and smiled. "As soon as Francine and Sue Ellen are done fighting over me, you can have the loser."

"Thanks, Arthur," said George insincerely. "You're so generous."

Alan began to speak in a hushed tone. "Do you think maybe they really did switch bodies? I know things like that aren't possible with known science, but with all the weird supernatural stuff that's been going on lately..."

"That's a scary thought," Arthur mused. "What if it's contagious? What if we all start switching?"

In his mind he imagined the absolute worst situation that could possibly happen. He and D.W. had just leaped onto the couch in their living room, and were playing a game of tug-of-war with the TV remote control.

"Give it to me!" cried D.W. "It's time for New Moo Revue!"

"No, it's mine!" Arthur insisted. "I want to watch the Bunny League repeat!"

As they struggled, a magical glow suddenly burst from the remote and surrounded the two children. They blinked, gasped, and began to look at each other in shocked disbelief.

"Omigosh!" exclaimed D.W., glancing down at her pink blouse. "I'm you and you're me! How did this happen?"

Arthur reached up, felt his glasses and short hair, and smiled. "Hey, this is cool! Now I'm older than you! I don't have to do what you say anymore!"

"Oh, this is terrible!" cried D.W. in despair. "I've been cursed for my selfishness!" She jumped down from the couch. "Stay here! I'm going to get help!"

"Oh, no, you're not," said Arthur, folding his arms smugly. "You're staying right here, young lady."

"Cut that out!" yelled D.W. angrily.

"Muwahahahaha!" Arthur laughed. "You are doomed! You must obey me forever!"

A second later Francine entered through the front door, wearing her red jacket. "Hey, guys," she called out.

The panicked D.W. ran toward Francine with all the speed her short legs were capable of, while the grinning, self-assured Arthur followed after her.

"Francine, you gotta help me!" D.W. pleaded. "I'm really Arthur and Arthur is really D.W.! I'm trapped in the body of a little girl!"

"What's wrong with being a girl?" asked Francine with a deadpan expression.

D.W. gave her a surprised look. "What?"

"You gave me a bad time because I wanted to be a boy," Francine went on. "Now you're a girl, and all you can do is complain. Get over it."

With that, Francine turned and exited through the door. The horrified D.W. placed her hands over her cheeks and screamed. "NOOOOO..."

...which was how most of Arthur's fantasy sequences ended.

"You okay, Arthur?" asked Binky upon noticing that the boy looked pale and frightened.

"Uh, yeah, fine," muttered Arthur as he touched his glasses to make sure they were still present.

In the meantime, George was indulging a more pleasant fantasy. In the school playground, the shadow of Binky had plunged him into darkness. Trembling, he delivered his unopened candy bar into the greedy hands of the larger boy. Suddenly a flash of light burst from the candy, enveloping the two boys.

George raised his hands and ran his fingers over his antlers. "Oh, no!" he cried in terror. "I'm in George's body! I'm a shrimpy little moose boy!"

Binky, meanwhile, was gazing at his own broad chest and ham-sized fists with satisfaction. "All right!" he gloated.

George began to quake and stammer. "Uh...you...you can keep your candy..."

Binky dropped the candy bar in the dirt, made a fist, and began to punch his other hand with it. "It's payback time!"

"Aaaargh!" George screamed, and his fantasy ended. He glanced down at his undersized body and sighed with disappointment.

"I...think I'll try to be nicer to my sister from now on," said Arthur.

"Yeah," Binky responded. "And I'll try to be nicer to George." He then slapped George firmly on the back, causing the boy to spit out his orange juice. "Sorry, George. There, I apologized."

"Uh, I'll see you guys later," said George, who dreaded nothing more than the prospect of Binky Barnes consciously trying to be nice to him.

After exiting the cafeteria and walking some distance down the corridor, he spotted Sue Ellen striding out of the girls' room. The girl had removed her hairbands, and placed a barette behind her ears to hold her abundant curls in place.

George approached her timidly. "H-hi, Sue Ellen. You, uh, look different."

Suefran looked at George and managed a weak smile. "Yeah, this new hair is crazy. If this doesn't work, I may have to wear a bandanna or something."

George felt as if a heretofore undiscovered breed of butterfly was reproducing at a fantastic rate within his stomach. "I...if you're not...I..."

"Spit it out," said Suefran impatiently.

"If you're not Arthur's valentine," George finally pushed out of his mouth, "then I'd like to ask you to be mine." There. He had said it.

Suefran scowled unhappily. "I should be Arthur's valentine. He thinks that just because I'm stuck in somebody else's body, I'm not good enough for him anymore. Okay, George, I'll make you a deal. If you believe I'm really Francine, then I'll be your valentine."

"I believe you," said George seriously. "I've always believed you."

Gratified, Suefran smiled, reached forward, pinched the boy's cheek, and walked away. After recovering from the shock of having his cheek pinched by an attractive girl, he yelled after her, "We must convince the others! This is only a prelude to the full-scale invasion!"

----

The kids had never seen Jenna play so lethargically and indifferently before. Half of the time she spent smiling vapidly and gazing into thin air, while the soccer ball rolled past without her notice. When she did participate actively in the game, she ran conservatively after the ball and kicked it with only slight force, as if she was afraid of breaking her glass slippers.

Although Francine and Sue Ellen were puzzled by this change from her usual take-no-prisoners attitude, they found that it was no inconvenience to them, as they were on the opposing team. What amazed their teammates even more was that, for the first time in memory, Sue Ellen was scoring more goals than Francine.

Jenna's team was defeated so crushingly that it made even Suefran wince. "What's gotten into you?" she asked the girl as they left the gym and headed toward the girls' locker room.

Jenna spoke as if she was in a blissful trance. "He thinks I'm beautiful..."

"I suppose someone has to," Suefran responded.

Finding that Jenna was not a very good conversationalist at the moment, Suefran sought out Fransue and started to chat with her. "I'm glad to see that your legs are good for soccer," she remarked.

"Uh, thanks," Fransue replied. "I guess."

"And they're not bad-looking legs, either. I've never told you this before, Sue Ellen, but I think you're really cute for a girl."

"Thanks," said Fransue as she alternated with Suefran in kicking the soccer ball toward the school building. "I...guess that's true about you now."

After a thoughtful pause, Suefran continued. "I've been thinking about the HIV thing. I may have your good looks now, but what good will they do me? What if I can never get a boy to love me?"

"Don't get me started on that," Fransue warned her. "I wrote more than twenty pages in my diary about that subject alone."

They spoke no more words to each other until they entered the girls' locker. As Fransue was pulling off her athletic shirt, she asked Suefran, "Sue Ellen, if we're still switched a week from now, can I read your diary?"

"No," replied Fransue without hesitation.

Suefran yanked off her barette and made ready to remove her shirt, when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned and saw Mrs. Taylor, a young rat woman who taught phys ed.

"Nice to have you back in our class, Miss Armstrong," the teacher said warmly. "I'd like to talk to you about something..._before_ you get in the shower."

Suefran groaned. She knew what Mrs. Taylor had on her mind.

(To be continued...)


	11. The Babysitter of Doom

Soon after the kids had returned home from school, Arthur was in his room solving some algebra homework problems when he suddenly realized that it was time to watch Bunny League. His feet barely made contact with the floor as he rushed out of his bedroom, sailed down the stairs, and landed on the couch in front of the TV. The remote was lying on the armrest of the couch, free for him to take, so he took it.  
  
"Bionic Bunny! Dark Bunny! Amazon Bunny!" intoned the announcer as the opening credits of Arthur's favorite show commenced.  
  
Then his ears were met with an unpleasant sound. "Arthur, it's time for New Moo Revue!" whined D.W. "Give me the remote!"  
  
"But I'm watching Bunny League," Arthur griped as D.W. jumped onto the couch next to him.  
  
"Mom said I could watch New Moo Revue," D.W. insisted. Unwilling to be denied, she grabbed one end of the remote control as Arthur held on to the other end, and soon a struggle was underway. Arthur, being the older child, easily gained the upper hand...but then he recalled his fantasy from earlier in the day.  
  
He quickly released the remote. "Okay, D.W. You can watch your show."  
  
D.W. eagerly flipped the channel.  
  
"When one hero is not enough, you need...Mary Moo Cow, Mary Moo Cow..."  
  
As Arthur bemoaned his misfortune, Adil emerged from the guest bedroom and looked at him and D.W. curiously. "Why are you fighting?" he asked.  
  
"D.W. wants to watch the new Mary Moo Cow show," Arthur explained, "but it's on at the same time as Bunny League."  
  
"In America you have many choices," Adil responded. "When I was in Turkey there was only one channel. We did not fight."  
  
"Whatever," Arthur muttered. On the TV screen, the new Mary Moo Cow, identical to the one that he and D.W. had met at the mall, waltzed about and sang songs with an ethnically diverse and gender-balanced band of adoring children.  
  
"Let's play a game!" gushed Mary in a voice that was even more ridiculously high-pitched than that of the previous cow. "Can you spell game? G-A-M-E."  
  
"Can you spell barf?" Arthur grumbled. "B-A-R-F."  
  
Yet the more he listened to the new cow, the more convinced he was that her voice indeed belonged to Jean Stiles, his one-time teacher, who had denied involvement. On the other hand, if he were Mary Moo Cow, he would surely be loath to admit it...  
  
"Hey, Arthur," D.W. said to him, "is that Mrs. Smiles in the cow suit?"  
  
"That's Mrs. Stiles," Arthur replied. "And that's not her. We asked her, remember?"  
  
"We're riding in a train, we're riding into town," sang Mary and her acolytes. "The doors slide open, closed, the wheels go round and round." Arthur found the song to be intolerably childish, despite the fact that it encouraged the use of public transportation.  
  
Suddenly a pale, feathery hand reached in front of the TV screen and pressed the power button, causing the image to disappear. "Hey!" cried Arthur and D.W. together.  
  
The hand was attached to a long, slender arm, which was in turn attached to the body of a teenage duck girl with spiky blond hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Arthur had seen her before; she was Van's sister Quinn, and this was her first day of service as their babysitter.  
  
She rubbed her fingers on the front of her green vest, as if afraid that she had acquired germs from touching the television. "Mary Moo Cow is a program utterly devoid of anything remotely resembling educational value," she said in a grating, officious voice.  
  
"What did you say?" asked the confused D.W.  
  
"She said it's a baby show," said Arthur, smirking.  
  
"Wrong," Quinn corrected him. "It's a show designed to mesmerize small children and prevent them from crying or misbehaving. It's not intended for the benefit of babies. The only people it helps are parents who are too busy or lazy to give their children the quality personal time they need to develop properly." The girl was now standing directly in front of the TV.  
  
"Okay, okay, I agree with you," said Arthur hastily. "So let's watch Bunny League instead."  
  
Quinn shot him a dirty look. "Bunny League is a show about unrealistic superheroes who do nothing but smash things."  
  
"They don't smash things. They try to stop the supervillains from smashing things."  
  
"But the end result is the same," Quinn went on. "Things get smashed. Children watch them getting smashed. It all happens so quickly that it's hard to tell the heroes from the villains."  
  
"No, it's not," Arthur responded. "The heroes are good-looking and the villains are ugly."  
  
"I can tell we're gonna get along just fine," Quinn grumbled. She then struck her hands together. "Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Quinn Cooper, and I'll be your babysitter tonight. I just turned eighteen, and I've been accepted into the Harvard law school. That's enough about me. Why don't you tell me who you are?"  
  
"I am Adil Faruk," said Adil, who hadn't moved from his spot in front of the guest bedroom. "I am from Turkey. I promise to be very obedient."  
  
"I'm Arthur Read," Arthur replied. "I'm nine years old, and I'm in Van's class."  
  
"I'm D.W. Read," said D.W. "I'm five years old, and..."  
  
"Hold it," Quinn interrupted. "What does D.W. stand for?"  
  
"I don't like to talk about it."  
  
Arthur was about to tell Quinn the meaning of the initials, but the girl held a hand in front of his mouth. "Let her tell me what it stands for," she insisted. "Refusal to say one's own name is often a symptom of a severe pathology."  
  
D.W. remained speechless. "Tell me what D.W. stands for," Quinn ordered her. "I'm authorized to use whatever means are necessary to extract the information, up to and including dropping spiders down your shirt."  
  
D.W. lowered her eyes. "Dora Winifred," she said bashfully.  
  
Quinn looked a bit disappointed. "I don't like the name Dora. I'll call you Winnie."  
  
"Winnie..." Arthur chuckled with delight. D.W. gave him a scorching look.  
  
"Now let me go over the rules with you," Quinn went on. "Rule number one, no TV."  
  
"No TV?" Arthur and D.W. groaned.  
  
"Rule number two, no junk food."  
  
"Awwww!" they whined.  
  
"Rule number three, no whining."  
  
"What gives you the right to tell us what to do?" Arthur demanded.  
  
"Rule number four, no arguing."  
  
"I'm getting out of here," said D.W., who started to climb down from the couch.  
  
"Rule number five, no leaving the house."  
  
D.W. seated herself and began to sulk.  
  
"Rule number six, no sulking."  
  
"You're not like the other babysitters," Arthur observed.  
  
"You mean the ones who spend all their time listening to music or making out with their boyfriends while you get into all kinds of trouble?"  
  
"Yeah, the good ones."  
  
"You're right," said Quinn flatly. "I'm not like them."  
  
"So what are we gonna do?" Arthur asked her.  
  
"First off, you'll finish your homework. After that, we'll have a delicious dinner of wild rice and spinach salad."  
  
"Ewww!" D.W. grimaced.  
  
"Rule number seven, no picky eating."  
  
Arthur lowered himself from the couch. "Well, I guess I'll get back to my homework."  
  
As Arthur went up the stairs toward his bedroom, D.W. smiled fearlessly at Quinn. "I don't have any homework," she boasted.  
  
"That's all right," Quinn replied. "I'll make you some." The girl walked over to a shelf, then pulled down some sheets of paper and writing instruments.  
  
"Quinn?" said D.W.  
  
"Yes, Winnie?"  
  
"Did you murder our parents?"  
  
(To be continued...) 


	12. Attack of the Spinach Heads

D.W. sat at the kitchen table, staring distastefully at the plate of spinach salad that lay before her. She felt like the Earth had left its orbit and was plunging towards the sun, but it was only Quinn's impatient, unblinking glare.  
  
"Neither of us is leaving this table until you eat your spinach," the duck girl told D.W.  
  
"This is a violation of my rights," said D.W. indignantly. "I want a lawyer."  
  
"My dad's a lawyer," said Quinn. "I'll call him over, as soon as you eat your spinach."  
  
Neither girl moved or looked away from the other for what seemed like hours. D.W. fantasized about jumping from her chair and making a break for it...  
  
She flew through the front door, the spindly-legged babysitter in hot pursuit. Before she reached the sidewalk, she discovered with horror that the street was full of strange-looking people with green faces and spinach leaves growing out of their heads. Tommy, Timmy, and Miss Cosma were among them, as well as Francine, Buster, Alan, and their parents. All in all, hundreds of zombie-like spinach people were wandering aimlessly around the neighborhood, occasionally running into each other or falling down gutters.  
  
"Duh...duh...duh..." they chanted in unison.  
  
D.W. stopped cold, too terrified to move. She noticed that it was no longer winter, but the middle of summer, and the sun had changed into a gigantic ball of green-glowing spinach. She heard a sound to her right, looked over, and saw that Pal had become a little green dog with spinach sprouts for fur. "Arf...arf...arf..." he droned.  
  
Then the most awful thing happened. All of the spinach-heads in the street turned, pointed at D.W., and emitted high-pitched alien noises from their throats. As they began to converge on her position, she stepped backwards toward the house...only to bump into Quinn, who was now a spinach person as well.  
  
"You will assimilate the spinach," Quinn ordered, pulling a piece of spinach from her spiky green hair. "Resistance is futile."  
  
Screaming with fright, D.W. bolted away from Quinn, and noticed as she ran through the yard that all the blades of grass were now curled spinach leaves.  
  
She only covered a few yards before slamming into the green-faced Nadine, who quickly rose to her feet and pulled a chunk of spinach from her tail. "You are the last human on Earth," she said in a monotone, holding the spinach in front of D.W. "Have some spinach. It's yummy."  
  
"No! No!" cried D.W. "Get it away from me!"  
  
"How about a nice peanut butter and jelly sandwich?" asked spinach-head Mrs. Read, who was standing over D.W. with a sandwich in her hand.  
  
"Okay," said D.W., temporarily forgetting her fear. She grabbed the sandwich from her mother's hand, took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. Then she felt a strange sensation throughout her body...  
  
"Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "The sandwich has spinach in it!" She dropped the sandwich and looked anxiously at her hands. "Skin...turning green... Brain...shrinking... Urge...to...say...duh...growing...stronger..."  
  
"No! I must fight it! I won't lose Earth to the spinach-heads!" D.W. ranted. She was sitting in her chair again, as Quinn, whose flesh had returned to normal, watched her from across the table.  
  
"Come on, it's only a little spinach," said the duck girl. "It won't kill you."  
  
"Then why don't you eat some?" D.W. challenged her.  
  
"Okay, I will." Quinn reached across the table and picked up a leaf of spinach from D.W.'s plate.  
  
"No!" D.W. slapped Quinn's hand, knocking the green weed from it.  
  
"Come on, Winnie." Quinn slowly retracted her hand. "The sooner you eat your spinach, the sooner you can go play with Arthur."  
  
In the living room, Arthur sat on the couch with a deck of large cards in his hands. "Your best friend tells you that a valuable treasure is buried in your yard," he read from the topmost card. "Your mother is away shopping. Do you: (a) grab a shovel and start digging everywhere, (b) dig a little hole and hope your mother won't notice, (c) wait until your mother gets home and ask her if you can dig, (d) do the Hokey Pokey?"  
  
As he struggled with this moral dilemma, he heard the doorbell ring. "I'll get it," Quinn called out. As she left the table to answer the door, D.W. grabbed the spinach from her plate and stuffed it into her blouse pocket.  
  
Quinn looked down and saw standing before her a girl whose appearance gave new meaning to the scripture, "The very hairs of your head are numbered".  
  
"Hi, is Adil home?" asked Jenna.  
  
"Yes, he is," Quinn replied. "Come in."  
  
"Hi, Jenna," Arthur greeted the cat girl as she strolled into the living room, yanked off her turquoise jacket, and laid it over a chair. "Adil's in the guest bedroom."  
  
"Who's the dork...I mean, duck?" Jenna asked him.  
  
"That's Quinn, our babysitter," Arthur answered. "Be nice to her, or you may never see the light of day again."  
  
Jenna found the guest bedroom door partially open, and slipped through. She found Adil sitting on the bed, reading a book entitled ENGLISH FOR ALIENS AND STRANGE PEOPLE.  
  
"Jenna!" he cried joyfully when he saw her.  
  
"Hi, Adil." Jenna seated herself on the corner of the bed. "Are you learning a lot of English from your book?"  
  
Adil nodded. "English is very hard. Some words, there are two ways to say them."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"Like read and read. I say 'I red a book' if it is in the past, but I say 'I reed a book' if it is in the present. It is very confusing."  
  
"Yeah, it's crazy." Jenna glanced over the page that Adil was reading, which dealt with verb conjugation. "And there are words that sound the same, but are spelled differently."  
  
"English is hard, but it is beautiful," said Adil, smiling. "Like you."  
  
Jenna giggled bashfully as Adil gazed at her with an expression of total sincerity. Then she became serious. "Adil, do you...do you really think I'm beautiful?"  
  
"Yes," Adil replied. "You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."  
  
"All the other kids think I'm ugly," Jenna lamented. "They say I need a nose job."  
  
"You have a beautiful nose," Adil complemented her. "It is a small nose. Fern has a big fat nose. Her face is all nose. She is not beautiful."  
  
Jenna patted her nose. "I guess I can call off the appointment with the rhinologist," she said with relief.  
  
Adil laid down his book. "I would like to kiss your nose," he told Jenna. "May I please kiss your nose?"  
  
Jenna suddenly felt as if several thousand volts of electricity were coursing through her body. It was a terrifying sensation, though pleasant at the same time.  
  
Her gaping mouth slowly curved into a smile. "Um...uh...yes," she stammered. "Yes, you can kiss my nose."  
  
Adil began to lean forward, when the two children heard a sound of a throat clearing from the doorway. "Hem, hem." Quinn, the babysitter, was leaning against the door frame, her arms folded. Adil and Jenna quickly pulled away from each other.  
  
"Rule number eight," Quinn informed them. "No kissing."  
  
(To be continued...) 


	13. Moo Who?

D.W. didn't sleep well that evening. Again and again she experienced the same nightmare...turning on the TV to watch New Moo Revue, only to discover that every channel now carried a show called "Quinn Cooper's Believe it...or Else". There was only one episode, consisting of boring lectures about the nutritional benefits of spinach, the importance of looking both ways before crossing the street, and why it was good and right for Quinn to cancel all of the other TV series. 

"Wake up, D.W.," came a sweet voice. D.W.'s eyes flew open, and she saw, to her delight, that her mother was standing in the doorway.

"Mom!" she cried, throwing off her blankie and leaping from the bed. Wrapping herself affectionately around Mrs. Read's leg, she gushed words of love and happiness. "Oh, Mom, I'm so glad to see you! I love you so much! I thought you'd never come back!"

So it continued as Mrs. Read limped down the stairway, D.W. clinging stubbornly to her leg. When her husband saw her enter the kitchen, he remarked, "She sure seems happy to see you."

"I'll say," said D.W.'s mother. "We'll have to ask Quinn to babysit again soon."

"NOOOOOOO!" screamed D.W. in anguish.

A short while later, D.W. walked into her kindergarten classroom to find that the other kids were occupied with various playtime activities. As Miss Cosma prepared some pictures of traffic signs, Dallin was jousting with the Tibbles using fake rubber swords, while Emily and Nadine admired Vicita's new Native American-pattern bracelet.

As D.W. gazed at her chosen valentine Dallin Cooper, a chill suddenly went up and down her spine. She recalled the harrowing events of the previous evening spent under Quinn's oppressive thumb...and Dallin was her little brother...

She began to fantasize about a possible married existence with Dallin. Dressed in a fancy bridal gown, twenty-year-old D.W. rested in the arms of the similarly aged Dallin, who wore a tuxedo and was in the act of carrying her across the threshold of their new home. "Oh, Dallin, I love you so much!" she said rapturously. "I want to live here with you forever!"

"Oh, you will," said Dallin as he placed D.W.'s feet on the floor and stood her up. "But first, let's establish some rules."

"Rules?" D.W. became anxious at the sound of that word.

"Rule number one," Dallin began, "we will eat nothing but spinach from now on."

"Spinach?" D.W. stuck out her tongue. "Ewww!"

"Rule number two, don't stick out your tongue. Rule number three, no unicorns."

Shocked, D.W. grabbed a stuffed unicorn from one end of the couch and held it to her chest. "But I love unicorns!" she protested.

"Rule number four," Dallin went on, "no fantasy sequences."

"Huh?" D.W. found herself back in the play area with the other kids.

Dallin ran up to her, grinning broadly. "Hey, D.W.! Odette helped me make a necklace for you!" He held up a necklace made of small sea shells.

Unsure of how to react, D.W. simply stood motionless and gaping. "You okay?" Dallin asked her.

"Uh, Dallin," D.W. said timidly, "I...I think..."

"You like it?" asked Dallin, widening the necklace with both hands in hopes that D.W. would allow him to put it over her neck.

"Dallin, I don't want to be your valentine anymore," D.W. blurted out.

Dallin's face fell. "But...D.W..."

"I'm sure Emily would love that necklace," said D.W. coldly. She then strolled past him and took a seat in one of the chairs near Miss Cosma.

As the deflated duck boy stood and gazed sadly at the necklace he held in one hand, Emily approached him, wiggling her rabbit ears. "I couldn't help but overhear. So it's over between you and D.W.?"

"Yeah, I guess so," moaned Dallin.

"She doesn't know what she's giving up," Emily remarked. "Come with me and I'll show you what a real valentine can do." She took Dallin by the arm and led him toward where the other girls were playing; he put up no resistance, but followed willingly.

----

A short time later, Mr. Wald was collecting book reports from the students in his fourth-grade class. Fransue, who had applied a curling iron to her hair that morning, held up her three-page report on "A Series of Ill-Conceived Alliterations, Volume One: The Boring Backyard" as the teacher walked by.

He picked up the report and looked at it thoughtfully. "This is Sue Ellen's handwriting," he pointed out. "Did she write this for you?"

"No, I wrote it," Fransue claimed.

"It has your name on it," said Mr. Wald, "but you clearly didn't write it."

Fransue struggled to come up with a defense. "I, uh, dictated it. Sue Ellen wrote it down for me."

"In that case, Sue Ellen will get the credit for it," said the teacher with finality. He then took Suefran's report on "Captain Underpants and the Booger Beast from Beyond Betelgeuse", glanced at it, and groaned. "Oh, no..."

As Francine and Sue Ellen were leaving the classroom after first period, Fransue suggested, "From now on, let's switch our homework before we turn it in."

"I don't like that idea," Suefran responded. She watched as Adil and Jenna walked past, hand in hand. "Or that one."

Not far away, Arthur was discussing a serious issue with Alan, Fern, and Binky. "When I asked her if she was the new Mary Moo Cow, she denied it," he related.

"Yeah, you're right," Binky remarked. "The new cow does sound a lot like Mrs. Stiles."

"How would you know?" Fern asked him tauntingly.

"Uh...uh...my mom watches it," Binky replied. "She's part of this group that looks for violence in kid's shows."

"Well, here's a possibility," said Alan.

In his mind he pictured Mary Moo Cow walking off the sound stage, removing her cow head, and revealing the face of Jean Stiles. "I've never been so humiliated!" she groused as the attendants helped her to remove the other parts of her costume. "I played Blanche in Streetcar! I played Anna Christie! And now here I am singing stupid songs and telling kids how much I love them!"

Having shed the last remnants of the cow costume, Mrs. Stiles pulled her blue dress from a closet and threw it on over the gray sweatsuit she had been wearing. "Is that thing ready yet?" she asked a stagehand who was tinkering with a handheld device that vaguely resembled a bar code scanner.

"Stand still and don't move a muscle, Jean," said the stagehand, who then placed the device in front of Mrs. Stiles' eyes. She sighed with elation as a rainbow of laser beams spread over her eyes and then vanished.

Then she glanced around in confusion. "How did I get here?" she asked.

Arthur grinned. "Yeah, if that was my job, I'd want to get my memory wiped every day."

"Maybe I can get her to tell me if I promise not to tell anybody else," Fern proposed. "She knows she can trust me with a secret."

"You go, girl," Binky encouraged her.

----

And she went. About two hours after school let out, Fern went to Mrs. Stiles' apartment and rang the doorbell. The door opened and the polar bear woman appeared, looking a bit worn out as if from strenuous exercise. "Hello, Fern," she said warmly. "Please come in."

As Fern followed her former teacher into the apartment, she smelled the welcome aroma of fresh oatmeal raisin cookies. "Help yourself," Mrs. Stiles told her.

Fern grabbed a cookie and took a bite, then saw something that caused her to lose her appetite. A new movie poster had been added to the many gracing the walls of the small apartment. The poster featured several grotesque walking corpses, with the tag line, "They're back, and they're still hungry!" It was a promotion for the direct-to-video flick _Terror of the Zombie Menace II_.

"What do you think of the new poster?" Mrs. Stiles asked her. "I was the mayor of the town that was attacked by zombies in that movie. My battle cry was, 'Better dead than living dead!'"

"It's creepy," Fern remarked.

"That poster was hard to find," Mrs. Stiles went on. "Only a few hard-core zombie buffs watched the movie."

Fern took another bite of her cookie and walked to the couch where the woman was seated. "If I were in a movie like that, I'd be ashamed of it."

"And I am," Mrs. Stiles replied. "But nobody's ever seen it, so what the hey?"

"I came here to ask you something," said Fern as she sat down. "All my friends at school think the new Mary Moo Cow sounds a lot like you."

"Yes, a lot of people have been saying that. Arthur and his sister came over the other night and asked me that question."

"Is it you?" asked Fern.

Mrs. Stiles paused thoughtfully. "Let me ask you a question, Fern. If you were Santa Claus, would you give out your street address?"

Fern carefully considered her answer. "Uh...no."

"Of course not. All the kids in the world would line up at your door. You'd never have any peace."

"I guess that's why he lives at the North Pole."

Mrs. Stiles placed a hand on Fern's back. "I'm sure that the woman who plays Mary Moo Cow, whoever she is, keeps it to herself so she won't be followed around by singing kids wherever she goes."

"You're right," said Fern as she popped what was left of her cookie into her mouth.

"Besides," said Mrs. Stiles, chuckling, "after playing Anna Christie and Blanche DuBois, why would I willingly submit myself to such an indignity?"

Fern smiled and chewed.

"I've heard they're planning to add another character to the show," Mrs. Stiles told her. "A smaller version of Mary, called Mini-Moo. You should try out for that part. I think you'd be really good."

"Where do I sign up?" Fern asked.

(To be continued...)


	14. Time to Face Reality

Francine awoke with an unusual pain in her head. It wasn't a headache...she had endured headaches before. She couldn't compare it to anything she had ever experienced. It felt as if her brain were exerting pressure on her skull from all directions.  
  
She opened her eyes. Her vision was blurry, and she found it difficult to focus. She could tell, however, that she wasn't in her bedroom. Over the previous few days she had started to think of Sue Ellen's bedroom as "her" bedroom, as that was where she slept; but it didn't matter, because she was clearly not in a bedroom at all.  
  
She was in a hospital room--she could tell from the antiseptic smell and the beeping of a nearby electrocardiograph. She hadn't set foot in a hospital since having her arm cast removed. Why was she in one now? Had she been injured again? Did she have a terminal illness?  
  
It wasn't long before she heard a familiar voice call out. "Francine?"  
  
It hurt to move her eyes, but she looked toward where the sound came from. Through the fog she barely perceived the presence of two figures, who resembled her mother and older sister. She wasn't sure which of them had spoken, but the significant thing was, she had been called by her real name. Was she cured?  
  
She slowly pushed herself to a sitting position. The pain in her head intensified, but not to unbearable levels. She found that her vision had become a bit more clear. A man standing next to Mrs. Frensky and Catherine, wearing a white doctor's jacket, passed her a hand-held mirror. She took it, her hand trembling, and gasped with surprise when she saw her reflection.  
  
It was her own face, although somewhat pale and with slightly sunken cheeks. A thick strip of gauze was wrapped tightly around her forehead, and held in place with tape. She tried to speak. "Wh-what h-happened?" she stammered weakly, relieved to hear her own voice coming from her mouth.  
  
"What's the last thing you remember?" the doctor asked her.  
  
"Uh...going to bed on Tuesday night," Francine replied. Anxiety welled up in her stomach. "Am I hurt? Did I have an accident?"  
  
"We were afraid you wouldn't make it," said the still rather vague figure of her mother.  
  
"I had the weirdest dream," said Francine, shaking her head to try to ease the pressure. "I was in Sue Ellen's body."  
  
"That wasn't a dream," the doctor told her. "You and your friend were victims of a rare disorder that causes people to switch personalities. The only cure is a full brain transplant."  
  
Francine gaped at the doctor in disbelief. "You mean...you took Sue Ellen's brain out of her head and put it in mine?"  
  
"And vice versa," said the doctor.  
  
"But you can't just cut somebody's brain out of their head," marveled Francine. "Can you?"  
  
"It's a very risky operation," the doctor explained, "but you wanted to return to your own body so badly that you were willing to chance it."  
  
Francine slowly turned her head one way, then another. "Where's Sue Ellen?"  
  
Mrs. Frensky and Catherine lowered their heads somberly.  
  
"What?" Dread siezed Francine's heart. "You don't mean..."  
  
"She didn't survive the procedure," the doctor informed her in a sterile voice.  
  
"NOOOOO!" shrieked Francine in horror. Then it occurred to her that she was screaming in Sue Ellen's voice.  
  
The pain in her head had vanished, and she was lying on her back amidst the dim light of morning. She looked around. On one side of the room stood the credenza on which many of Sue Ellen's African knickknacks were placed, as well as the bookshelf, which contained various travel and school books plus the off-limits diary. On the other side, posters of Egypt and India graced the wall.  
  
She sighed pathetically. It had been a dream. Nothing had changed.  
  
----  
  
"You haven't touched your scrambled eggs," said Valerie Cooper to her young son Dallin, who was sitting at the dining table, staring glumly at the yellow mass lying on his plate.  
  
He reached out indifferently with his left hand and lightly placed a finger on top of the eggs. "Happy?" he asked his mother.  
  
Mrs. Cooper, who was feeding strained peas to baby Megan, looked at Dallin sternly. "You're not going to kindergarten until you eat your breakfast," she warned.  
  
"I don't want to go to kindergarten," Dallin moaned. Behind him, Odette grabbed a strip of bacon from the rack where it had been placed to drain, and stuffed it into her beak.  
  
"Dude, I'll go in your place," offered Logan, who was pouring a glass of orange juice. "Emily sounds like a totally cool chick."  
  
"You wouldn't like her," Dallin told him. "She hasn't grasped the concept that boys do boy things and girls do girl things."  
  
Odette sat down next to him, clutching another bacon strip. "I don't see why boys and girls can't like the same things," she remarked.  
  
Logan took a sip of his juice. "Hey, I like chick flicks. As long as the chicks have fast cars and guns."  
  
At that moment Quinn entered the kitchen, clad in her usual green vest. In one hand she held a stiff hairbrush, with which she was attempting to smooth the spikes in her hair.  
  
"You can brush and brush all you want," Logan mocked her, "but your hair's still gonna look like something that crawls around on the bottom of the ocean."  
  
"You'll be crawling around on the bottom of the ocean if you don't shut up," said Quinn menacingly.  
  
"Try to get along, kids," Mrs. Cooper admonished the two.  
  
"All Emily can talk about is her stupid ponies and her stupid earrings and the stupid stuff she brings back from stupid France," Dallin whined. "I wanted D.W. to be my valentine, but she's afraid of me."  
  
"Probably because of me," said Quinn, who was preparing a bowl of Nuttin' But Bran breakfast cereal. "She and I didn't hit it off very well when I was her babysitter."  
  
"I wonder why," mused Logan. "Oh, wait, I know." He began to imitate Quinn's voice. "Come on, kids, turn off the TV and let's do some fun logic problems."  
  
"People have been killed by flying spoons before," muttered Quinn as she took a bite of cereal.  
  
"I have an idea," said Mrs. Cooper to Dallin. "Why don't you invite D.W. to dinner with us? That way she'll see that we're all nice people."  
  
"Mom, I wish you wouldn't call her D.W.," Quinn complained. "Her name's Dora Winifred. What kind of message does it send to a child when you call her by her initials all the time?"  
  
Dallin became thoughtful. "Yeah," he said, starting to smile. "I'll do that."  
  
----  
  
Morning recess was intended as a time for schoolchildren to enjoy themselves, but Francine didn't enjoy being in Sue Ellen's body one bit. She sat on a bench near the playground, her chin resting on her hands, her mouth curved downward in a miserable scowl. Over her curly hair she now wore a bandanna with a zigzag pattern that she had borrowed from her mother...or rather, Mrs. Armstrong. Occasionally a child passed by her and stopped to watch her frown, but nobody asked her what was wrong--she had already told everyone who would listen.  
  
From the corner of her eye she saw Sue Ellen walking up to her in Francine's body. The girl's expression was even darker than her own, as if she had just received news that her favorite aunt and uncle had died within the past hour.  
  
"Can I sulk with you?" Fransue asked her with a tone devoid of happiness. Suefran patted the bench to the right of her, and a moment later, the winter sun was shining down on two depressed girls sitting next to each other.  
  
"What are we gonna do, Francine?" Fransue asked hopelessly. "It's been five days, and we're still stuck being each other."  
  
Suefran didn't answer. She didn't look at Fransue. In front of them, two laughing boys chased each other around on the jungle gym.  
  
Then Suefran sighed. "It's time to face reality. We may never get switched back. We should accept what's happened and go on with our lives. I mean, with each other's lives."  
  
Fransue's voice started to break. "But I don't want to be you."  
  
"Tough," said Suefran callously. "You're me." She straightened her bandanna and went on. "My dad has a saying: 'When life gives you lemons, the tough get going.'"  
  
"But I want to be with my mom and dad," Fransue moaned.  
  
"At least you've got the sister you always wanted," Suefran noted. "I'm an only child now."  
  
The two girls gazed wordlessly into the air. In the playground, Binky and Rattles argued loudly about who would win an upcoming televized wrestling match.  
  
"You're right," said Fransue with a tone of resignation. "Unless a miracle happens, I'll just have to get used to being Francine Frensky."  
  
"And I'll have to get used to being HIV-positive and having Shirley Temple hair," Suefran added.  
  
The kids in the playground started to walk towards the school building. Neither of the two unhappy girls moved.  
  
"If I'm going to be you," said Suefran, "then I should learn everything I can about you. I think I should be allowed to read your diary."  
  
She expected an angry retort, but Fransue only continued to look straight forward, her expression unchanged. After a while, tears formed in her eyes and streamed down her cheeks.  
  
"Go ahead," she said quietly.  
  
She felt as if she was cutting the last thread connecting her to her previous life. More tears coursed from her eyes, and she began to sob.  
  
Suefran put her arms around the sorrowing girl. "It's all right," she said comfortingly. "We still have each other."  
  
In stark contrast to the poignant scene on the playground bench, a tableau of exquisite bliss was playing out in one of the outside corners of the school building. Adil and Jenna were sharing a passionate kiss, humming pleasurably and pawing each other's backs. When their lips separated, Adil smiled warmly and spoke sweet romantic words in imperfect English.  
  
"I love you very much, Jenna," he told her. "You are so beautiful."  
  
"Thank you, Adil," said Jenna breathlessly. "And I love you."  
  
Their lips met again. They felt nothing of the winter cold.  
  
"I...must ask you a question," said Adil hesitantly when he had finished kissing Jenna.  
  
Crazed with affection, the girl eagerly awaited his query.  
  
"Jenna Morgan, will you...will you marry me?"  
  
Jenna's eyes suddenly widened by two sizes.  
  
(To be continued...) 


	15. Dear Diary

"M-marry you?" Jenna stuttered in shock. "B-but I'm only nine!"  
  
"We will be married when we are older," said Adil with a tone of innocence. He took Jenna's hand and caressed it fondly.  
  
"But we may not be together that long," said Jenna, pulling her hand away. "Besides, I may love somebody else by that time. I'm sorry, Adil. I can't promise to marry you when we're older."  
  
Disappointment was evident on the girl's face as she walked away from Adil. The Turkish boy, unwilling to accept defeat, grabbed her by the arm. "Please, Jenna!" he pleaded. "I love you. I love you more than the girl that my mother and father want me to marry."  
  
"What?" cried Jenna in astonishment. "What do you mean?"  
  
"My mother and father choose a girl, and they want me to marry her," Adil explained.  
  
"That's crazy!" Brimming with indignation, Jenna tore her arm away from Adil's grasp and walked quickly away from the now forlorn-looking boy.  
  
She ignored or avoided Adil for the remainder of the school day. The desperate look on his face inspired no compassion in her heart. "What kind of wild boy would propose to a nine-year-old girl?" she asked herself in disbelief.  
  
----  
  
Shortly after the end of school, Fransue accompanied Catherine on a trip to the local thrift store. Sue Ellen had never visited McDollar's before, as she had only lived in the country for a little over a year, and had done most of her shopping at the mall. As she followed her new older sister around the aisles, she saw little that interested her, except perhaps makeup. But she was Francine now, and try as she might, she couldn't picture Francine's face with makeup on it.  
  
At the back of the store, Fransue and Catherine came upon a display of berets of various colors, including red, green, and blue. "You keep saying you want a red beret," Catherine informed her. "How much do you have saved up?"  
  
Fransue reached into her pocket and drew out a wallet. It was a humble cloth pouch that had belonged to Francine, but had been transferred to her along with many more of Francine's things, most of them unwelcome. She opened the clip, pulled out several bills, and counted them. Five dollars and a few coins--just enough to buy a blue beret.  
  
It would make her look French. Perhaps a change of fashion would help her to feel more comfortable in her new body.  
  
"No," she said, shaking her head.  
  
Catherine picked up a few teen magazines, and the two girls started toward the checkout line. Along the way, Fransue noticed several bound notebooks sitting on one of the shelves. They had red speckled covers, and on the front of each were printed the words PROPERTY OF, with a space underneath for the owner to write his or her name. They were much plainer than the journal that had been ruined in the school fire, let alone the personally embossed one that Muffy had given her as a gift. But the price--$3.99--was within her reach.  
  
She impulsively reached out and picked up one of the notebooks. Moments later, she was the ambivalent owner of a new journal. On the way back to the Frensky apartment, she deliberated about what she would write in it. Should she tell the truth about what happened to her? Would her children and grandchildren believe it? How would she keep it private, now that she shared a room?  
  
"If I know you," Catherine taunted her, "you'll only write in it once a month." How wrong she was.  
  
After enjoying a humble dinner of fried chicken and kosher beans with the Frenskys, Fransue retired to her bedroom, took a seat on the bed, and placed the journal on her lap. Catherine was talking on the phone with Mitch Branca, so she would have plenty of time to herself.  
  
Nervously gripping a ball-point pen in her right hand (the Frenskys found it remarkable that she had suddenly become right-handed), Fransue compelled herself to write her name--her new name--in the space provided on the cover: FRANCINE ALICE FRENSKY. Every letter she inked felt as if she was slicing off a section of her heart. She had written Francine's name on homework several times, but never on something so personal as a journal.  
  
She opened the cover and began to write, slowly and uncertainly at first.  
  
"Dear Diary: The last time I started a new diary, it was because the old one was burned in a fire. Now I'm starting another one, and something much worse has happened."  
  
A small drop of water fell onto the page below the words she had penned. She rubbed it off with her sleeve, then wiped her eyes with her fingers. What she was doing felt like an act of treason against her best friend.  
  
She moved the journal further down her lap, so that the tears rolling down her face would land on her pants instead. Sadness overwhelmed her, and she felt an urge to choke up, but she knew she had to keep writing, even if she was doomed to experience the same painful emotions every time she re-read this page.  
  
----  
  
The oval-shaped slice of honey-baked ham lay on the plate in front of Suefran, tempting her with its luscious aroma. Francine had eaten a hot dog from a concession stand once, only to endure a stern lecture from her father. She had never knowingly ingested pig products since then. It was just something Jewish people didn't do. But she wasn't Jewish anymore...was she?  
  
"It's very good, Daisy," said Mr. Armstrong, who was greedily devouring his own slice, like a pig cannibalizing a fallen comrade.  
  
Suefran imagined that the piece of ham before her resembled a road sign. A one-way sign. If she took a bite, she could never go home again.  
  
Slowly, nervously, she took up knife and fork, cut off a small segment, and lifted it into her mouth. The taste was unusual, but not unpleasant. She began to chew, and found it rather enjoyable. Forgetting herself entirely, she swallowed, then carved off another chunk. She hoped that Father Abraham and great-grandpa Frensky would understand her special situation.  
  
After finishing her slice of ham, she requested another slice, which Mrs. Armstrong gladly provided. Suefran ate hastily and eagerly, as if hoping that the strange meat would drive away her memories of her previous life as Francine, resulting in oblivious contentment.  
  
"I haven't seen you so hungry since...well, for a long time," Mrs. Armstrong remarked.  
  
Having sated herself with ham, Suefran excused herself and went into the bedroom. Dinner was out of the way, and the moment she had long awaited was upon her. She went to the bookshelf and picked up Sue Ellen's diary.  
  
PROPERTY OF SUE ELLEN, warned the cover. PRIVATE. DO NOT OPEN. FAVOR NO ABRIR. But she was Sue Ellen now...she had the right...  
  
This was even more difficult than the ham. Her hands felt dirty and unworthy as she carried the large 300-page notebook across the room and onto the bed.  
  
Once she was comfortably seated with her back against a pillow, she untied and removed her bandanna, allowing her curls to fall wantonly around her shoulders.  
  
She grasped edge of the front cover and slowly turned it. There was writing on the first page. She felt the excitement drain from her heart. She suddenly felt not as if she was on the brink of a wonderful and tantalizing discovery, but more like she was studying for an arduous entrance exam. The entrance into a life that she had not lived, but was doomed to complete...  
  
Summoning determination, she began to read silently.  
  
"Dear Diary: I'm starting a new diary after the old one was burned. I don't remember very much of what was in the old diary. I'll just write things down as I remember them. Muffy gave me this new journal. I think she just wants me to feel like she owns me. Sometimes I want to slap that stupid snob."  
  
Suefran felt offended. Muffy was a snob, but she wasn't stupid.  
  
"May 25. Spent the day in downtown Crown City with Muffy and Carla. We went to the international market, the thrift store, and the poetry slam at Renee's. Muffy did nothing but whine. Then she saw the subway, and she loved it. She didn't whine anymore after that, but she sang that silly song over and over. I wish she had a mute button."  
  
"May 29. Woke up, took a bath, ate breakfast, went to school. Mr. Ratburn was sick, so his sister substituted again. When I got home I had to write in my journal right way, to make sure I hadn't forgotten how to write. I haven't. What a relief."  
  
"June 10. Mom and Dad and I got on the plane to fly to India. It was a really long flight. We stopped in Portland, and then we flew over the ocean. I had to use the barf bag twice."  
  
"June 13. We drove into the countryside. I saw a herd of Indian elephants, and Mom took a picture of them." A copy of the picture was taped to the page in the journal.  
  
"July 4. Woke up, ate breakfast. Shezadi made a special rice pudding with raisins and nuts because she knew it was a special day for Americans. Dad was at work the whole day. All the Americans at the embassy got together for a party. There was a cake frosted like the American flag."  
  
"July 13. Woke up, ate breakfast. Shezadi taught me a new Hindi word, but Dad told me never to say it."  
  
Suefran's eyelids began to droop. Even Sue Ellen's description of her stay in India was mostly dull and repetitive, as if spending the summer in an exotic locale was routine for her. And, other than her sentiments toward Muffy, she hadn't gained much new insight into the girl's character.  
  
Then Sue Ellen began to recount her return to America, and things became more interesting...  
  
"August 8. We arrived in Elwood City. Went back to the house, unpacked our things. Some of my friends came to visit. Francine was there, and Muffy, and Fern, and Buster, and the Brain, and Arthur. Francine fell off a horse and broke her arm. I was so happy to see Arthur. I thought about Arthur all the time when I was in India. That never happened to me before. I think I'm in love with Arthur."  
  
There followed several paragraphs describing in great detail Sue Ellen's feelings toward Arthur. Francine's broken arm was not mentioned again.  
  
The romantic ramblings went on and on, and Suefran was getting sleepy. She inserted a bookmark, closed the journal, and laid it on the night stand. It would still be there in the morning, and she would still be Sue Ellen.  
  
(To be continued...) 


	16. Vermicelli and Mystery Meat

To the bemusement of the Armstrongs, Suefran spent most of her Thursday morning reading from Sue Ellen's diary. She read while eating, she read while getting dressed; the only place where she didn't read was in the bathtub. As she walked down the street toward the elementary school, she frequently had to shake off the snowflakes that were clinging to the pages.  
  
"November 7th. I was so sad because Carla broke up with Nigel. I went to Arthur's house to get my saxophone and be cheered up. He was so kind and sweet. He let me cry on his shoulder. Then the most wonderful thing happened. I kissed him! And then he kissed me back! And then we kissed some more! I'm not sad anymore, because Arthur loves me!" The borders of the page were lined with hearts, flowers, and repeated scrawlings of "I love Arthur" and "Arthur loves me".  
  
When the bell rang at the end of first period, Suefran put away her science book and eagerly pulled the diary from her bag. Whipping it open, she resumed her reading of Sue Ellen's ecstatic musings about the prospect of Arthur going to Africa with her. After Mr. Wald and the rest of the kids had left the room, she sensed that someone was peering over her shoulder. She turned her head, and Francine was standing there, grinning. Suefran was actually happy this to see the face that had once belonged to her.  
  
"You're getting close to the part about the accident," Fransue informed her. "I hope it doesn't gross you out too much."  
  
"I've got your stomach," Suefran pointed out.  
  
Fransue held out the red-speckled notebook that she had purchased to record her new diary. "What do you think?" she asked.  
  
"Oh, it's nice." Suefran put out a hand to touch the book, but Fransue yanked it away.  
  
The two girls met again in the center court during morning recess. Suefran was poring over the diary when Fransue casually strolled past, whistling.  
  
"Hey, uh, Francine," Suefran greeted her. "I wanna talk to you."  
  
Fransue took a seat next to her. Suefran looked at her seriously and asked, "You really did love Arthur, didn't you?"  
  
"Yeah, I did," Fransue replied solemnly. "As much as a nine-year-old girl could love a nine-year-old boy. And for a while he loved me too. But then he got cold feet. And then I went to Africa, and the accident happened..."  
  
"Do you still love him?"  
  
Fransue grimaced with embarrassment. Then she appeared to be deep in thought for several seconds, as if she was searching her feelings.  
  
"Yes," she answered sadly. "But I'm like his sister now. He's known Francine forever."  
  
Suefran (heretofore called Sue Ellen) took Fransue (heretofore called Francine) by the shoulder. "If you love him, tell him," she urged.  
  
Francine shook her head. "I can't. He doesn't look at me that way."  
  
As Sue Ellen opened her mouth to offer more words of encouragement, she saw Jenna walking by, all alone. "Hey, Jenna, why aren't you with Adil?" she asked the girl.  
  
Jenna scowled, but not at Sue Ellen. "That boy's a nutcase," she complained. "He says his mom and dad picked a girl for him to marry, but he'd rather marry me."  
  
"You're right," Sue Ellen agreed. "He is a nutcase."  
  
"No, he isn't," Francine chimed in. "If I'm not mistaken, he's from the southeastern part of Turkey, where arranged marriages are very common."  
  
"What kind of marriages?" asked Jenna.  
  
"Arranged," Francine replied. "That means your parents choose who you marry."  
  
"No way!" said the visibly disgusted Jenna. "I'd never let my parents tell me who to marry."  
  
"Of course not," Francine went on. "But in some parts of the world, that's the custom. They probably look at us and say it's stupid for us to have to look for someone to marry when we can just let our parents choose. I don't think Adil understands that we do things differently here in America."  
  
Jenna looked toward Sue Ellen, as if expecting a second opinion. "Uh...what she said," was Sue Ellen's response.  
  
"Arranged marriages, huh?" said Jenna thoughtfully. "That's really weird, but I guess it's what he's used to." She shrugged and walked away.  
  
There were no further interruptions, so Sue Ellen attempted once again to provoke Francine to express her feelings to Arthur. "I think you two would make a great couple. You're his valentine, right? Give him a card. Give him flowers. I never did that."  
  
"I could try," said Francine meekly.  
  
----  
  
Lunch hour arrived, and Sue Ellen was enjoying a meal of vermicelli noodles with mystery meat (she gave no thought as to whether it was kosher) while perusing the diary written by the former inhabitant of her body. She had arrived at the page on which the description of the plane crash began.  
  
"We were over the Okavango Delta. There was nothing but hills and marshes. One of the engines went out, and we had to land, but there wasn't a good place. The plane got lower and lower, and then there was a loud noise, and things were flying all over the place, and then the noise stopped, and I was on the floor, and my arm was hurting, and blood was coming out of it like a squirtgun, and I fainted."  
  
It wasn't the best thing to read during lunch, and Sue Ellen was hard pressed to keep her food down while reading the graphic details of what happened after the former Sue Ellen regained consciousness.  
  
As she took the last bite of vermicelli, she happened upon a segment that piqued her interest: "My dad thought somebody was trying to hurt us. He thought somebody sabotaged the plane so it would crash. I don't know if it's true or not. I know some people want to hurt my dad, but I'm not allowed to write about that."  
  
Elsewhere in the cafeteria, Adil and Jenna were seated opposite each other, as Jenna explained the American customs of courtship and marriage to Adil.  
  
"The big cities in Turkey are very much like the West," said Adil. "But my mother and father believe in the old ways. They were engaged when they were eight years old."  
  
"That's not how we do it in America," Jenna told him.  
  
"I am sorry, Jenna," said Adil humbly. "I did not understand when Arthur told me what is a valentine. I thought that my valentine is the girl I will marry."  
  
Jenna giggled. "No, silly. I'm only your valentine until Valentine's Day is over."  
  
Adil lowered his eyes. "I do not understand American customs. I am a very strange person here."  
  
"You're not strange," said Jenna encouragingly. "You just have an original point of view."  
  
Meanwhile, Francine was strolling out of the cafeteria when Sue Ellen caught up with her, clutching the diary. Making sure nobody was within earshot, she asked, "Who wants to hurt your dad?"  
  
Francine froze to the spot. Her eyes widened. "I-I can't talk about that."  
  
"Come on, Sue...Francine," Sue Ellen pressured her. "He's my dad now. If someone has it in for him, I want to know."  
  
Francine took a deep, slow breath, as if hoping that Sue Ellen would be distracted by something else while she filled her lungs.  
  
"He's a diplomat," said Sue Ellen, waving her arms emphatically. "Who'd want to hurt a diplomat? Diplomats make peace."  
  
"Exactly," Francine replied. "Think about it. Who'd want to hurt a peacemaker?" She grinned as if relieved to have deflected the question.  
  
"A...a warmaker," Sue Ellen answered.  
  
Francine strode away without another word. Sue Ellen watched her quizzically as she disappeared around a corner. A feeling in her gut told her that something important was being kept from her. Or was it just the vermicelli?  
  
(To be continued...) 


	17. Grace

When school let out, Sue Ellen didn't bother to place the diary in her bag, but carried it in her hand as she walked back to her house. She found her mother bent over in front of the potted saw palmetto, moistening the soil with a small sprinkler.  
  
"How was school, dear?" asked Mrs. Armstrong without looking up from the plant.  
  
"Fine, Mom." Sue Ellen dropped her book bag and diary, pulled off her coat, and placed it on the rack. "Francine showed me her new journal. She's keeping a diary now."  
  
"That's lovely." Mrs. Armstrong straightened up and smiled at her daughter. "What else happened?"  
  
"George bought me a box of chocolates," Sue Ellen continued, "but the bullies got to him before he got to me."  
  
"Oh, that's too bad." Mrs. Armstrong was wearing a bandanna similar to the one that held Sue Ellen's hair in place, but with an Aztec calendar pattern.  
  
Sue Ellen followed her mother into the kitchen, where a batch of macadamia nut cookies had been prepared. "I wish the bullies would leave him alone," she said earnestly. "He's a nice boy. He never hurts anyone. He's just like Dad."  
  
Mrs. Armstrong picked up a plate of cookies from the counter and lowered it in front of Sue Ellen, who snatched one and took a bite.  
  
"Mom, why would anybody want to hurt Dad?" asked Sue Ellen with a mouth full of cookie crumbs. "He does so much good for the world."  
  
"Let's not talk about that, dear." Mrs. Armstrong's words sounded more like a command than an attempt to soothe her daughter's fears.  
  
"Mom, I'm worried," said Sue Ellen in her best helpless child voice.  
  
"I picked out a costume for you today," said her mother, who was clearly trying to change the subject. "Would you like to see it?"  
  
"Costume? For what?"  
  
"Your renaissance maiden costume." Mrs. Armstrong seemed astonished at her show of ignorance. "For the SCA convention. It's pink, and it comes with a tiara. It's really pretty."  
  
"What's SCA?" asked Sue Ellen naively.  
  
"The Society for Creative Anachronism." Mrs. Armstrong put down the plate of cookies, and set about sharpening the kitchen knives. "You went last year, remember? Except I couldn't find a costume that fit you in time, so you wore a kimono."  
  
For a moment Sue Ellen forgot her attempt to glean knowledge about her father's enemies, as her mind dwelt on the possible fashion horrors she would have to endure in her new body...  
  
----  
  
"I'm serious, Mom," said D.W. with an anxious, paranoid tone. "I think that story about Van getting hit by a car is made up. I think Quinn's feeding him poison and keeping him sick."  
  
"Don't be silly," replied her mother, who was dragging her by the hand up the access ramp leading to the Coopers' front door.  
  
She knocked three times. An instant later the door began to slowly swing open. D.W. was horrified to see that nobody was standing on the other side...the door was moving on its own! Was Quinn opening it with her evil mind powers? Or was it the ghost of one of her unfortunate victims?  
  
"It's haunted!" she cried, jumping behind her mother's leg and burying her face in the hem of her dress.  
  
"No, it's not," Mrs. Read reassured her as Dallin scampered toward the doorway, followed closely by Van in his wheelchair. "It's an automatic door. It makes it easier for Van to get in and out."  
  
"Come in, D.W.," Dallin welcomed her warmly. "You've never been inside our house before."  
  
Mrs. Read gently pushed on her frightened daughter's back, pressuring her to walk into the Cooper house. D.W. gaped in terror, expecting that at any moment Quinn would leap out from behind a piece of furniture, attach electrodes to her forehead, and sap her of her free will. "Don't be afraid," Van and Dallin encouraged her.  
  
D.W. stared blankly into the distance, too terrified to move or breathe. She barely noticed when her mother closed the door behind her, trapping her inside the strange duck house.  
  
Then she heard, and saw, something that renewed her courage. "You...you have a TV?" she stammered.  
  
Indeed, a modest-sized television set stood in front of a nearby wall, broadcasting a music video. Logan, wearing a dingy red shirt, tattered jeans, and no shoes, was seated on the couch, swaying his head to the beat of the rock song. When he heard D.W.'s voice, he turned his head, revealing the new stud in his upper beak. "Dude," he said thoughtlessly. "Uh, I mean, girl dude."  
  
"Of course we have a TV," said Dallin. "Everybody does. What is this, the stone age?"  
  
"What's your favorite show, D.W.?" Van asked her, although he was sure he already knew.  
  
"New Moo Revue!" D.W. exclaimed, hopping with excitement.  
  
"That's trippy stuff, girl dude," Logan remarked.  
  
Van pointed down at his lap. "Wanna ride in my chair?"  
  
"Sure!" D.W. quickly and eagerly raised herself onto Van's legs, and the boy took his chair for a spin around the living room.  
  
"Does Quinn live here, too?" D.W. asked Van as they rounded the coffee table for the third time.  
  
"Yeah, she does."  
  
"And she lets you watch TV?"  
  
"I can't really do anything to stop them," came an older girl's voice. D.W. gasped when she saw the figure of Quinn Cooper standing at the other end of the room, the light from the west-facing kitchen window creating a backlit glow around her.  
  
Then her attention was distracted by the strangest-looking duck she had ever seen. Odette had emerged from her bedroom, wearing a light blue ballet outfit with sparkling slippers.  
  
Van drove the wheelchair across the room to meet her. "D.W., have you met my sister Odette?"  
  
D.W. moved her wondering eyes up and down the girl's eighteen-inch neck. "Yes, I'm a swan," said Odette peevishly. "No, I wasn't adopted." Then she smiled and pinched the little girl's cheek. "You're cute."  
  
"I like swans," said D.W. with glee. "I have a toy swan that I put on a glass of water and it goes up and down and drinks the water."  
  
"Like this?" Odette began to gracefully bob her head up and down, pecking D.W. on the head at the bottom of her arc.  
  
D.W. giggled and smiled. "Wow, a real swan girl!"  
  
"So, how do you like our family?" asked Quinn, who had walked up behind Van's wheelchair where D.W. was seated. "I'm not a babysitter here, so the rules aren't the same. You can watch TV, you can eat junk food, you can even whine and sulk, but I can't think of any reason why you would want to."  
  
The scent of baked tuna wafted into the room, and all eyes turned toward the kitchen, where Mrs. Cooper had placed a casserole on the dining table. "Dinner's ready," she called out. "And there's no spinach in it."  
  
"Awesome!" yelled D.W., who leaped down from Van's lap and rushed into the kitchen. The Cooper children followed after her as Mrs. Cooper dished out portions of casserole onto their plates.  
  
Soon D.W., Quinn, Logan, Odette, Dallin, and Mrs. Cooper were seated in wooden chairs, while Van sat in his wheelchair and baby Megan squirmed in her high chair. The rich-smelling food tempted D.W., and she immediately laid her napkin over her lap and took up her fork. "Not yet," Mrs. Cooper cautioned her. "We haven't said grace."  
  
"Grace," said D.W., and then she stuffed a forkload of casserole into her happy mouth.  
  
Van began to snicker. "It's not funny," said Quinn, elbowing him.  
  
"Odette, say grace," said Mrs. Cooper.  
  
"For what we are about to receive, O Lord..." Odette began, then burst into uncontrollable giggles.  
  
Shortly Odette, Van, Logan, and Dallin were shaking with laughter, while Mrs. Cooper and Quinn watched indignantly, and D.W. wondered what the big deal was.  
  
A minute later the laughter died down, and Odette bowed her head to continue the supplication. Then Quinn had a suggestion. "I think we should let Winnie say the blessing on the food," she said, smirking.  
  
Murmurs of approval went up from around the table. "This should be good," said Logan expectantly.  
  
Mrs. Cooper, after a second's thought, nodded her head approvingly. D.W. closed her eyes and assumed a reverent posture.  
  
"For what we are about to receive, O Lord, we give thanks," she prayed. "But we would appreciate it if you would help out in the kitchen a little more. Amen."  
  
----  
  
Sue Ellen's bedtime was an hour earlier than Francine's, owing to the fact that Francine had a teenage sister with an active social life. Still, she was determined to finish the diary before sleeping, as she might discover some clue as to what danger her father faced, and from who. Her eyes grew fatigued as she pressed on, shining a flashlight on the current page underneath the bulky quilt.  
  
"I found out today that I have the HIV virus. This is the same virus that causes AIDS, but the doctor says that some people get HIV but don't get AIDS. We went to the pharmacy and got some medicine. It will protect me from getting AIDS. I'm not afraid. My dad is so sweet. I love you, Dad."  
  
The words started to run together as she kept going, page after page after page.  
  
"Something really creepy happened in school today. George and Fern were having an argument. Then George floated up into the air and started bouncing off the walls. Then he fell on the floor and his antler broke off. Poor George. Then we all went to Prunella's place and Prunella's sister hypnotized Fern. There was a ghost inside Fern that looked like Fern, and she was the one who made George bounce around. She said she was sorry, and then she disappeared."  
  
"Muffy is missing. Fern thinks she ran away. She didn't like going to the private school. She was failing fourth grade. I like Muffy. She used to be a real snob, but now she's better. I hope she's all right."  
  
Finally she reached the last page, and slowly closed the journal. She wondered why the old Sue Ellen had kept its contents secret from all of her friends. There was nothing that would have made them her enemies, or at least, nothing for which they wouldn't have readily forgiven her. She had expressed many intimate sentiments, but mostly in the sort of bland prose that one might expect to encounter in a romance novel. Her yearning for Arthur made entertaining reading, and her frank descriptions of the arm injury and subsequent treatments could easily give one nightmares, but other than that, there was little of lasting note in her writings.  
  
The new Sue Ellen switched off the flashlight, laid it and the journal on the nightstand, and rested her head on her pillow. As drowsiness overcame her, she asked herself whether what she had just read would ultimately make any difference in her life. She was Sue Ellen on the outside, but inside she didn't feel at all like the girl whose personality was embodied in those two hundred or so handwritten pages. If she ever decided to pour her own soul into a book, it would be much different. Much shorter...  
  
Then a sudden thought aroused her. She recalled something that Francine (her former name, which now belonged to another) had told her a few days earlier:  
  
"Don't get me started on that. I wrote more than twenty pages in my diary about that subject alone." The subject of whether an HIV-positive girl could ever hope for the love of a boy.  
  
She couldn't remember having read twenty pages on that subject. For that matter, it didn't seem like she had even read one page about it. There were forty-odd pages following the discovery that she had HIV, but they were mostly dedicated to trivial matters. She felt a desire to pick up the flashlight and re-check the journal, but she trusted her memory--the pages in question simply were not there.  
  
Had it been a mistake? Or a lie?  
  
(To be continued...) 


	18. Truth

The next morning was Friday...a week since the switch between Sue Ellen and Francine had taken place. Sue Ellen (or rather, Francine in Sue Ellen's body) used the first opportunity she could find--the break between first and second period--to grill Francine (Sue Ellen in Francine's body) about what she had read, and hadn't read, in the diary. 

"You told me that you wrote twenty pages about whether HIV would stop you from ever finding a boy to love you," Sue Ellen asked Francine as the two girls stood behind the back wall of the school, far from prying ears.

"Twenty pages?" Francine became nervous and evasive. "Uh, maybe I didn't remember right. Come to think of it, it was actually closer to ten."

"It was closer to zero," said Sue Ellen with a suspicious glare. "In fact, you hardly wrote a thing about it in your whole diary. It's like you woke up one morning with a big zit on your nose, then it went away, and you forgot about it."

Francine could only grin and shrug.

"We're talking about a disease that can kill you!" Sue Ellen exclaimed. "All your friends have been worried sick about you ever since they found out you had it. I even saw Alan crying once. Yet you don't seem to care at all. Now that I've got it, you seem to care even less!"

She could see tiny drops of sweat forming on Francine's brow as the girl replied, "Well, you know me. I'm not afraid of anything. Besides, as long as I keep taking the drugs, there's a good chance I'll...you'll have a normal lifespan."

"A good chance?" Sue Ellen narrowed her eyes. "How good?"

Francine shrugged again. "Uh, I don't know exactly."

"How much do you know about HIV?" was Sue Ellen's next question. "Have you even read anything about it?"

"I, uh, read some brochures once. At the blood bank."

Sue Ellen stared blankly at her. It was obvious that she would get no answers through this avenue, so without a word, she turned and walked away.

She shook her head unbelievingly as she made her way to the school entrance. The depth of Francine's ignorance and apathy in regard to HIV was appalling, considering that she had been infected with the virus back when she was still Sue Ellen. Could it be that she had yet to learn the concept of mortality?

Art class, phys ed class, history class, recess, and lunch hour all blurred into each other as Sue Ellen obsessed over Francine's indifference and her own future prospects. Would she grow up? Should she make plans? What if Alan's story of traveling into the future and hearing of Sue Ellen's death was true?

By the time school ended for the day, she had pledged to learn everything she could about the virus and how to improve her chances of surviving it. Without saying a word to any of her friends, she walked quickly to the nearest bus stop, stood in the freezing cold for ten minutes, and took a ride into downtown Elwood City.

She jumped off the bus about half a block away from the blood bank. Still toting her book bag over her shoulder, she walked toward the small white building, which was decorated with a red cross and a banner with the words FREE HIV TESTING.

As she entered, a white-uniformed aardvark woman and a sterile hospital-like smell greeted her. "Hi there," said the smiling woman, who was dressed like a nurse but was obviously a mere receptionist. "What's your name?"

"It's Sue Ellen, ma'am," she answered, impressed that she hadn't started to say Francine by accident.

"And how can I help you?" From the tone of her voice, Sue Ellen imagined she was expecting a response along the lines of, "I'm lost and I'm scared and I want my mommy."

"I...want some information on HIV," she replied, feeling a tad embarrassed.

"We have some brochures," said the woman, gesturing toward a rack on the wall filled with reading materials. "We also provide free testing. Where are your parents?"

As Sue Ellen searched her mind for a convincing excuse, she scanned the booths along the back wall of the building. In most of the booths, a person sat with a blood-filled tube leading from an elevated bag into his or her arm. She felt as if worms were crawling in her stomach. Francine hated needles, broken arm notwithstanding, and though she had inherited Sue Ellen's body, she didn't have the girl's fearless nature.

She was too nervous to think of a good excuse, so she told the truth. "My parents don't know I'm here."

The receptionist nodded understandingly. "So do you want the test, or just the brochures?"

Sue Ellen turned the woman's question over and over in her mind. What was the point of another test? What would it tell her? On the other hand, it was free, and she could see how it was done...

"I'll take the test, too," she bravely blurted out.

As it turned out, the real "test" was sitting patiently for fifteen minutes while her imagination vividly pictured one nightmare scenario after another. What if the nurse punctured her in the wrong place and all her blood squirted out? What if the needle got stuck and had to be removed with pliers?

Finally her turn came, and she took a seat on a plastic chair while a teenage cat girl with curly red hair was cleaning a small needle with antiseptic. "My name's Denise," said the girl, smiling reassuringly. Sue Ellen felt a sense of dread as she realized that this what probably what she would look like when she reached adolescence. "Have you done this before?"

She wasn't sure what to answer...the old Sue Ellen had, but Francine hadn't. It occurred to her that if she said yes, then the girl would ask her about the results of the previous test, which would lead to confusion.

"No," she replied.

"It's easy," said Denise. "I poke your finger and take out a little blood, then I put it on a strip that detects the presence of antibodies. Those are cells in your blood that fight against viruses. Now stick out your finger..."

Sue Ellen did so, and the girl lowered the small needle onto her fingertip. There was a short pricking sensation, and a tiny amount of blood oozed through the hole that was left. Denise took a sample, and then taped a cotton swab over the wound.

The prick had been unpleasant, but not as bad as the actual waiting for it to happen. She had endured it courageously. She felt proud. Perhaps she would follow up her victory by donating blood...no, wait, she couldn't do that anymore.

Then Denise showed her a strip with colored squares on it. "Congratulations," she said, smiling. "The test result is negative. You're clean."

_What...?_

"I...don't have HIV?" Sue Ellen stuttered in disbelief.

"You sound disappointed." Denise put down the strip and gently patted her on the bandanna. "Now pick up some snacks on the way out, and don't forget your bag."

"It must be wrong!" cried Sue Ellen, leaping to her feet. "I had tests done before! They turned up positive!"

"You said this was your first time," said Denise, a bit surprised.

Not sure what to think or believe, Sue Ellen reached down, picked up her book bag, and walked slowly away.

Inside her head, Francine's mind was drowning in confusion. How was this possible? Was it the unicorn horn? Then why hadn't it worked the first time? Had the drugs somehow eliminated the virus from her system? That seemed highly unlikely...

She was certain of only one thing...she had to tell Francine immediately...

She exited the bus at the stop closest to Francine's apartment building. As she hurried down the sidewalk, she thought it odd that she wasn't at all happy about the news. Her new body was healthy. She wouldn't die. Other than the fact that it wasn't the body she was born with, she really had no cause to mourn. Yet something about all of this was very strange...

She bounded up the stairway, charged into Francine's apartment without knocking, and found that Francine was watching TV while her mother was plugging away at the sewing machine. "Francine! Francine!" she cried earnestly.

"What?" Curious, Francine rose up from the couch to meet her.

"I don't have HIV!" Sue Ellen shouted.

The response was far from what she expected. The wide-eyed Francine lunged at her, placing one hand firmly over her mouth and wrapping the other arm around her chest. She then literally dragged Sue Ellen into her bedroom, where her sister Catherine was seated on a bed, reading a teen magazine.

"Out, Catherine! Now!" barked Francine as she removed her hand from Sue Ellen's mouth and released the girl from her grip. Confused at first, Catherine quickly jumped from her bed and hurried from the room. Francine slammed the door shut after her while the speechless, stupefied Sue Ellen looked on.

The two girls sat down--Francine on her bed, Sue Ellen on Catherine's bed. "Don't...ever...do that again," Francine whispered sternly.

"I don't have HIV," Sue Ellen whispered back. "I went to the blood bank and got tested, and..."

"I know," said Francine quietly.

"You know?" asked Sue Ellen. "Know what?"

"I know you don't have HIV. You never did. I never did. I've known all along."

Sue Ellen's mouth gaped open so wide that her jaw hurt. She hadn't imagined this in even her wildest speculations.

"But...but...why..." she stammered helplessly.

"Now that you're me, there are some things you need to know," said Francine in a half-whisper. "You may find them hard to believe. The important thing is, you must not tell anyone else. Ever."

As Sue Ellen stared at her incredulously, Francine stood up, walked over to Catherine's CD player, inserted a rock album, and started to play it at the highest volume level. The overpowering bass sound shook the walls of the bedroom. The door remained closed. Francine returned to her seat on the bed.

"Hank Armstrong is not really a diplomat," she told Sue Ellen in a normal voice. "He's an agent of the CIA."

(To be continued...)


	19. Disbelief

Stunned beyond belief, Sue Ellen struggled to speak coherently. "You...you mean...your dad...my dad's a _spy?_" 

"Something like that," Francine went on calmly. "I don't know everything about what he does, but it's really secret, and really dangerous. I can't tell anybody about it. I can't even talk to my dad about it unless he brings it up. And now that you're me, you'll have to keep it a secret as well."

"I can't believe this." Sue Ellen shook her head in astonishment. "This is just too crazy to believe. First I get stuck in your body, now you tell me that your dad's a spy! What'll you tell me next? That you're all aliens?" Her voice rose in pitch until it was audible over the pounding rock music.

"If I were an alien, you would have known by now," Francine pointed out.

"Okay." Sue Ellen took a deep breath and tried to compose herself. "Suppose I believe you. What does that have to do with the fact that you...I don't really have HIV?"

"After I got hurt in the plane crash, my dad became obsessed with protecting me," Francine explained. "His idea was to pretend that I had HIV, then full-blown AIDS, then to fake my death, and give me a new identity. He thought it would be convincing, because of the high AIDS rate in that part of Africa, and the fact that I got blood transfusions."

"Who is he trying to protect you from?" asked Sue Ellen with fear in her voice.

"I'm not really sure. Foreign agents, or terrorists, or something. All I know is that they're very dangerous. The only reason they haven't killed us is because they don't know my dad's real identity."

Sue Ellen sighed with exasperation. "I don't believe a word of it," she muttered.

"I haven't told you the good part," Francine continued. "He's been training me to become an agent. That's why I do so much martial arts."

Upon hearing that, Sue Ellen angrily jumped to her feet, walked over to Catherine's blaring stereo, and turned it off. She cast a dirty glance at Francine as she opened the bedroom door and marched out. "Wait!" Francine called after her, but the girl had already exited through the door of the apartment.

As Francine stood in the doorway watching the indignant Sue Ellen walk down the stairs, she could hear Mrs. Frensky speaking on the telephone with someone: "That's right, Daisy. She came in here and told Francine that she didn't have HIV. I don't know what else she said. She went into Francine's bedroom and turned the music up really loud. I guess they were talking about secret crushes or something."

Meanwhile, Sue Ellen was pondering the things that Francine had told her, and still found them impossible to accept. She had heard of secret agents before--people who spent their lives alone, wandering incognito among the unsuspecting masses, constantly placing themselves in mortal danger. The man who lived down the street, whose daughter had been her friend at school, whose daughter she now was, could not, could_not_ be a secret agent, as unusual as his mannerisms might be. He just wasn't the type.

As she walked along the street with her hands in her coat pockets, she tried her best to explain away Francine's story. It could be a fairy tale, or some sort of prank...but if it were true, then it would explain why she didn't have HIV after all, and why her new parents were so evasive when she questioned them. If it were true, then she had to get out of it somehow. She had been raised the daughter of a garbage man...she was now the daughter of a spy, and would be expected to follow in his footsteps...she couldn't do it...she didn't want to...

Her mind was still troubled as she entered the Armstrong house and made ready to take off her coat. Glancing toward the living room, she saw that her parents were seated together on the couch, staring at her with the type of intensely stern expressions that could peel paint from walls. She froze. She could tell there was a serious problem.

"After you get your coat off, you and I need to have a little talk," Mr. Armstrong told her. "In your bedroom."

Wondering what she had done wrong, Sue Ellen nervously pulled off her coat and tossed it onto a nearby chair. She then shuffled into her bedroom and sat down on her bed. She had no idea what she was about to face, but she supposed it had something to do with her HIV test or Francine's spy rubbish.

A minute later her father entered the room and closed the door. His face was emotionless, but Sue Ellen could tell that he was worried about something. He held a small black object in his hand; it vaguely resembled the remote control which he carried on his keychain and used to lock and unlock the car. Pointing the object in the direction of the bookshelf, he pressed a button, and the object (which Sue Ellen guessed was an electronic device) began to emit a faint, high-pitched whine. A red light on top of it began to blink rapidly. Mr. Armstrong began to slowly and carefully swivel, pointing the device in an arc around the room.

Sue Ellen decided it might be a good time to try to obtain information that would prove or disprove Francine's claims. "Does this have something to do with your CIA job?" she asked quietly. Her father placed a finger over his mouth, as if warning her not to speak.

However, Sue Ellen had decided that she would no longer put up with his hush-hush attitude. "I've been thinking, Dad," she said, holding her hands between her knees. "I think it's cool that you're a spy and all, but I don't think that's the life for me. I just want to be a normal kid."

Mr. Armstrong waved his fingers over his lips, as if to say, "zip it". He didn't say a word, but continued to move his feet in a circle and rotate, holding the device rigidly in his outstretched arm.

Suddenly, as he was facing the foot of Sue Ellen's bed, the device started to beep loudly. His expression changed, and she could tell that he was afraid. He slowly stepped closer to her, and the beeping grew louder. Then he bent his knees onto the floor and began to feel along the bottom of the footboard with the hand that wasn't holding the device. Sue Ellen swung her legs out of the way as her father searched intently. The beeping became louder and louder.

He then latched onto something with his fingers. As he withdrew his hand, she perceived that he was holding a tiny object. A tiny, round object covered with a latticework of metal wires. She wasn't sure, but it looked like some sort of microphone.

(Next: The shocking final chapter!)


	20. Despair

What little of the temple sermon Francine hadn't slept through had been abysmally dull. As she sat in her apartment watching TV after the end of the service, she imagined ways that she might excuse herself from attending in the future. Maybe she could claim to have a rare disease that caused her to become gravely nauseous every Saturday morning. Or perhaps she could simply state that she had decided to change religions and become a non-practicing vegetarian.  
  
As she deliberated her options, she heard the phone ring. "Frankie, it's for you," called Catherine, who sounded disappointed that it hadn't been Mitch.  
  
Thinking it might be Sue Ellen, Francine rose eagerly from the couch. She hadn't heard from her other half since the previous night, when she had admitted the truth about Hank Armstrong's occupation. She wondered how the girl was reacting to the news. "Hello?" she said into the phone.  
  
She was startled to hear a muffled female voice. "You and Sue Ellen meet me at the old barn at two o'clock. I'll put you to sleep and switch you back, and then you'll go on like nothing happened. No parents, no police, and no tricks, or else you'll stay the way you are forever." Then the call ended.  
  
Francine could hardly stay on her feet as she put down the receiver. Finally, the deliverance she had dreamed of ever since the instant, eight days ago, when she had opened her eyes and found that she was no longer Sue Ellen. Finally, the nightmare would be over.  
  
She hurried from the apartment, pulling her coat over her arms as she leaped down the stairway. She had to tell Sue Ellen...Francine, that is...there was no more reason to call her Sue Ellen, since they would soon be restored to their old selves.  
  
It never occurred to her as she raced down the sidewalk that the person or people responsible for switching them might have a sinister agenda that should be brought to the attention of the authorities. All she could think about was how happy she would be when she regained her own body and returned to live with her own parents...  
  
She quickly reached the Armstrong house and pounded giddily on the door. A moment later it was answered by the man of the house. "Come in, Francine," he said with a smile.  
  
Francine stepped into the house and noticed, to her surprise, that several large cardboard boxes had been placed around the floor. In addition, many items had disappeared from the shelves on the walls, including most of Mr. Armstrong's book collection. "Is Sue Ellen home?" she asked.  
  
"I guess she didn't tell you," Mr. Armstrong replied as he wrapped his hands around a set of books and pulled them down from the shelf. "We're leaving."  
  
"Leaving?" Francine's jaw dropped. "Why?"  
  
"I've been called on an emergency assignment to Karjakistan. Things are getting out of hand there, even more so than usual. Sue Ellen and Daisy have gone ahead. I'll be joining them, as soon as I make arrangements to move our belongings."  
  
"Why don't you all go together?" asked Francine curiously.  
  
Mr. Armstrong carefully inserted the books in his hands into one of the boxes. He looked up at Francine, smiled, and didn't answer.  
  
Then the truth of the situation hit Francine like a dagger cleaving her heart in two.  
  
"You're not going to Karjakistan," she said, her voice rising to a frantic pitch. "You've sent them to some undisclosed location to keep them safe! You think your cover's blown!"  
  
"My cover?" Mr. Armstrong said to the horrified girl. "What do you mean?"  
  
Despair filled Francine's voice. "I know you're not really a diplomat. I know you work for the CIA! I know you have enemies who want to kill us! I know these things because I'm really Sue Ellen!"  
  
Mr. Armstrong stared at her, annoyed and speechless.  
  
Francine threw her arms around the man's waist, tears spraying from her eyes. "Please, Dad! You have to believe me! You've got the wrong girl! Don't leave me behind!"  
  
The next thing she saw through her tear-soaked eyes was Mr. Armstrong's angry expression and his arm pointing toward the door. "Go!" he exclaimed. "Get out! Shoo!" He was dismissing her like a dog. It would be her last memory of him. He would tell no one where he was going...  
  
Unable to bear the sight, Francine turned and fled from Mr. Armstrong's presence, sobbing violently. When she had slammed the door after her and reached the front porch, she sank to her knees, put her hands over her eyes, and wept with all her might. Her anguished cries caused all the dogs in the neighborhood to turn their heads and perk up their ears.  
  
She wished she could die on the spot. Her life was as good as over anyway. She would never see her parents again. She would never be Sue Ellen again. There was nothing she could do.  
  
There was one thing she could do...  
  
----  
  
The time was two minutes before two o'clock. The old barn next to the creek was more brightly illuminated than normal, but there were still shadows, and a figure lurked in one of them. It was a child of undistinguishable gender, dressed in a baggy brown shirt and pants, with a blue ski mask covering its head. In one hand it held a small red bottle with a nozzle and trigger attached to the top. Its index finger was wrapped nervously around the trigger, as if the child expected at any minute to have to pull it.  
  
Half a minute passed, and then the sound of rustling weeds was heard. It was followed by rapid footsteps, growing louder, as if someone was in a tremendous hurry.  
  
An instant later, Francine Frensky charged through the opening in the barn door, gasping and panting with rage. The masked child lifted up the bottle it was holding, and pointed the nozzle toward her. "This won't hurt a bit," came a voice from behind the mask, which sounded like it belonged to a girl.  
  
Francine shrieked and lashed out with her foot, knocking the bottle from the masked girl's hand. It landed on the hay-littered floor of the barn and rolled several feet. The girl, seeing she was under threat, put out her hands and assumed a defensive posture.  
  
Her anger unabated, Francine hurled her right fist at the girl, who swung her arm and blocked it. Then Francine threw a left hook, which was similary countered. Whoever this girl was, she had been trained.  
  
The empty barn echoed with Francine's furious screams as she launched a barrage of kicks and punches at the mysterious girl who had robbed her of her body and her life. She held nothing back. The girl danced about skillfully, dodging and blocking Francine's attacks. The grim contest went on for about fifteen seconds, at which point Francine managed to squeeze in her right fist and connect with the masked girl's nose. The girl cried out in pain. The advantage now hers, Francine struck with her left fist, catching the girl in her exposed right eye. She threw four more punches, pummelling the girl's face. Then she stood back while her foe dropped to her knees, wobbling and struggling to remain upright.  
  
The fight seemed to be over...or was it a trick? Francine wasn't sure, but she knew she had to see who was behind the mask. Reaching out cautiously with her right hand, she grabbed the girl's ski mask by the eyehole and yanked it off, revealing a pair of slicked-back rabbit ears...  
  
...and the dazed, bloodied face of Beat Simon.  
  
(To be continued in AGF VI) 


End file.
